DISTINGUISHED 
AMERICANS 


iARVEY  O'HIGGINS 


o 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED 
AMERICANS 


BOOKS  BY 
HARVEY  O'HIGGINS 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

THE  SECRET  SPRINGS 

FROM  THE  LIFE  ^ 

HARPER  &  BROTHERS 

Established  1817 


Some 
Distinguished  Americans 

Imaginary  Portraits 


BY 

HARVEY  O'HIGGINS 

Author  of 
'THE  BBCBET  SPRINGS,"  "FROM  THE  LIFE,"  ETC. 


HARPER  &  BROTHERS  PUBLISHERS 
NEW   YORK  AND  LONDON 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED 

AMERICANS 

Copyright,  1922 
By  Harvey  O'Higgins 
Printed  in  the  U.  S.  A. 

First  Edition 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I.  HENRI  ANTON 3 

II.  Bio  DAN  REILLY 47 

III.  MRS.  MURCHISON 87 

IV.  WARDEN    JUPP 136 

V.  PETER   QUALE 179 

VI.  DR.  ADRIAN  HALE  HALLMUTH 227 

VII.  VANCE  COPE .251 


504 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED 
AMERICANS 


SOME   DISTINGUISHED 
AMERICANS 

I.    HENRI  ANTHON 

"For  Anthon  is  to  American  art  what  Poe  is  to 
American  literature." 

— J.  Sydney  Bartle,  in  International  Art. 


WHEN  you  see  Rome  and  the  dome  of  Saint 
Peter's,  you  are  supposed  to  say  to  yourself: 
"Oh,  of  course!  Michelangelo!"  And  when  you 
see  Saint  Paul's  in  London,  you  know  that  you  are 
looking  at  a  memento  of  Sir  Christopher  Wren. 
But  when  you  see  the  sky  line  of  New  York  and 
the  towering  white  Broadway  Building,  do  you 
cry:  "Ah!  Henri  Anthon!"  Do  you?  Certainly 
not. 

Do  you  even  know  that  this  sacred  Fuji-yama  of 
Manhattan  is  Anthon's  monument?  No.  Nor  do 
any  of  the  thousand  other  enthusiasts  who  have 
etched  it,  painted  it,  photographed  and  sonnetized 
it,  reproduced  and  glorified  it  in  every  medium  of 
artistic  expression.  Yet  it  was  Anthon  who  first 
brought  the  Broadway  Building  into  the  office  of 
its  creator — on  the  sheet  of  a  scratch  pad,  if  you 

[3] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

to  believe  An thon's  account  of  it — and  asked, 
carelessly:  "'How  about  that?" 

The  head  of  the  firm  took  it.  He  just  took  it, 
as  Anthon  has  described  the  scene — just  took  it, 
and  no  more. 

"Yes,"  he  said,  after  a  moment.  "That  has  pos 
sibilities."  He  pulled  his  ear,  studying  it.  "De 
cidedly,"  he  said.  "Decidedly.  Yes.  I  could  make 
something  of  that."  And  Anthon  went  back  to  his 
drawing  board  in  the  drafting  room,  smiling 
secretly  at  the  secret  gleam  in  the  architect's  eye. 

Anthon  has  explained  that  he  smiled  secretly 
because  the  Broadway  Building  was  a  joke  to  him, 
and  he  had  foreseen  that  his  famous  employer 
would  take  it  seriously,  and  his  famous  employer 
had  taken  it  seriously.  So  has  everyone  else  from 
that  day  to  this.  They  have  none  of  them  sus 
pected  the  humor  of  it.  Yet,  according  to  Anthon, 
he  had  said  to  himself:  "New  York  doesn't  build 
cathedrals  to  Saints  Peter  and  Paul.  It  builds 
them  to  Saints  Profit  and  Loss.  Why  not  make 
the  Broadway  Building  look  like  what  it  ought  to 
be — a  temple  to  the  faith  that  is  in  us?"  And 
grinning,  with  one  eye  closed  against  the  fume  of 
his  cigarette,  he  made  a  quick  pencil  sketch  of  an 
office  building  in  Gothic  architecture,  like  a  great 
cathedral  gleaming  white,  with  a  tower  that  soared 
like  a  spire.  He  chuckled,  holding  it  off  to  get  its 
general  effect.  "Lord!"  he  said.  "It's  a  go!" 

It  was.    He  had  found  something  that  the  whole 


HENRI  ANTHON 


staff  had  been  seeking.  He  had  found  a  plan  for 
the  Broadway  Building  worthy  of  the  sum  of 
money  to  be  spent  on  it.  He  had  designed  a  monu 
ment  to  himself  that  was  destined  to  be  as  con 
spicuous  as  the  Great  Pyramid,  although  his  name 
is  not  on  it,  any  more  than  the  name  of  the  Egyp 
tian  architect  is  on  that  tomb  of  Cheops. 


We  looked  at  it  together,  once,  from  the  deck 
of  a  Jersey  ferryboat. 

"A  sense  of  humor,"  Anthon  said,  "is  a  wonder 
ful  thing.  A  wonderful  thing!  That  edifice  ought 
to  be  called  'Anthon's  Folly.'" 

He  was  on  his  way  to  Hoboken  to  take  the  Hol 
land  Line  to  Boulogne  and  Paris.  He  was  as  happy 
as  if  he  were  ascending  bodily  to  Heaven.  Paris 
at  last! 

"Why  not  smile?"  he  asked  me. 

I  did  not  feel  like  smiling.  I  was  thinking  of 
Grace  Aspinwall,  who  had  created  Anthon  as  truly 
as  Anthon  had  created  the  Broadway  Building. 
And  he  was  certainly  her  "Folly." 

"Well,"  he  said,  "you  always  did  take  life  sacra- 
men  tally.  How  are  you  getting  on?" 

He  had  been  crossing  the  ferry  in  a  taxicab,  with 
his  hand-baggage  and  his  steamer-rug.  He  had 
seen  me  inhaling  the  breezes  on  the  stern  of  the 
boat.  We  had  not  met  for  years.  We  have  never 

[53 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

met  since.  Yet  he  greeted  me,  and  parted  from 
me,  as  casually  as  if  we  saw  each  other  every  other 
day.  We  did  not  say  a  word  about  his  past.  We 
talked  only  of  his  trip  to  Paris. 

"When  do  you  expect  to  be  back?"  I  asked,  at 
parting. 

"Never,"  he  said,  "as  long  as  that  endures," 
waving  his  hand  at  his  masterpiece.  "I'm  afraid 
they'll  find  out  that  I  did  it  on  them.  Good-by!" 
And  he  climbed  into  his  taxi,  grinning — little 
"Hank"  Anthon,  with  his  Parisian  mustache,  his 
Murger  necktie,  and  his  morality  of  Montmartre 
— although  he  had  never  been  nearer  Montmartre 
than  Coney  Island. 

3 

It  is  as  if  a  clever  landscape  artist  should  claim 
that  he  had  created  the  Alps.  And,  nevertheless, 
it  is  true,  except  for  one  vital  detail.  Anthon  did 
not  do  the  design  as  a  joke. 

The  proof  of  that  fact  is  to  be  found  in  the  seventh 
number  of  his  Bibelot.  Or  don't  you  know  about 
his  Bibelot?  It  was  a  sort  of  amateur  magazine 
which  he  and  his  wife  published  "every  now  and 
then,"  some  years  ago.  He  etched  the  designs  for 
it,  and  she  wrote  the  verses,  and  they  printed  it  in 
their  studio,  at  night,  on  a  little  handpress  for 
which  she  set  the  type  and  he  made  the  plates. 
They  called  it  a  "bibelot"  because  they  had  the 
mistaken  idea  that  the  word  "bibelot"  meant  a 

[61 


HENRI  ANTHON 


booklet.  It  scarcely  paid  expenses  while  they  were 
publishing  it,  but  a  complete  set  of  its  ten  numbers, 
uncut,  sold  for  fifteen  hundred  dollars  the  other 
day.  It  has  become  a  literary  curiosity. 

There  is  a  plate  in  No.  7,  illustrating  a  poem 
called  "The  City,"  by  Grace  Aspinwall;  and  in 
that  plate  the  sky  line  of  New  York  culminates  in 
the  aspiring  episcopal  tower  of  the  Broadway 
Building.  The  etching  was  made  years  before  the 
architect  was  even  given  the  commission  to  design 
the  building — as  the  date  on  the  magazine  shows — 
<and  some  one  has  lately  quoted  that  fact  as  an 
example  of  some  sort  of  occult  prevision.  (I  think 
it  was  Rupert  Hughes.)  The  truth  is  that  Anthon 
did  the  etching  from  his  imagination,  fantastically, 
and  then  unconsciously  reproduced  his  dream  tower 
as  a  design  for  the  Broadway  Building,  and  sub 
mitted  it  to  his  employer  as  a  joke,  unaware  that 
his  original  conception  had  been  serious  and  poetic. 

And  there  you  have  a  sample  of  the  kind  of 
thing  that  used  to  puzzle  us  in  Anthon.  There  was 
always  a  shocking  discrepancy  between  his  art  and 
his  personality.  In  his  work  in  the  Bibelot,  he  was 
of  the  school  of  Aubrey  Beardsley,  though  without 
even  Beardsley's  mirthless  humor.  His  subsequent 
series  of  "Manhattan  Nights"  has  been  hailed  as 
showing  a  technic  that  is  "a  combination  of  Mer- 
yon's  solid  gruesomeness  with  Whistler's  grace"; 
and  a  monograph  in  International  Art  has  an 
nounced  authoritatively  that  "Anthon  is  to  Ameri- 

[7] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

can  art  what  Poe  is  to  American  literature."  Yet 
personally  he  seemed  to  have  neither  purposes,  nor 
ideals,  nor  even  serious  opinions  as  an  artist.  At 
one  time  his  studio  was  much  frequented  by  a 
group  of  painters  and  writers  who  were  in  revolt 
against  established  art — the  group  that  afterward 
published  The  Free  Voice — and  to  all  the  dis 
cussions  about  art  that  were  never-ending  among 
them,  I  heard  him  contribute  only  one  quotable 
expression  of  opinion.  In  reply  to  an  artist  who 
contended  that  art  was  properly  "a  criticism  of 
life"  Anthon  said:  "Well,  why  not?  It  would 
only  be  fair — since  life  is  so  often  a  criticism  of  art." 

Certainly,  his  art  was  never  a  criticism  of  life. 
Neither  was  his  life  a  criticism  of  his  art.  They 
seemed  to  be  entirely  divorced  from  each  other. 
And  though  almost  nothing  has  been  written  about 
his  life,  and  reams  have  been  written  about  his 
art,  I  think  his  life  was  the  more  interesting.  It 
was  the  more  significant.  And,  unlike  his  art,  it 
had  a  moral. 

Take  his  first  meeting  with  Grace  Aspinwall. 

4 

One  night,  in  the  spring  of  a  year  in  the  later 
'nineties,  she  was  crossing  Madison  Square,  on  her 
way  from  her  work.  She  passed  a  policeman  as  he 
stopped  to  rouse  a  man  who  was  asleep  on  a  bench. 
The  man  did  not  rouse.  He  toppled  over  across 

[8] 


HENRI  ANTHON 


the  iron  bench  arm;  his  hat  fell  off  and  a  loose 
package  of  drawings  slid  from  his  lap  and  scat 
tered  on  the  asphalt  pavement  of  the  walk. 

She  stooped  to  pick  them  up.  "He's  an  artist," 
she  said,  looking  at  them,  surprised. 

The  policeman  glanced  over  his  shoulder  at  her 
with  an  air  of  saying:  "Well,  suppose  he  is?  A 
drunk's  a  drunk." 

She  saw  that  the  man  on  the  bench  was  a  young 
man,  pale  and  unshaven,  but  scrupulously  shabby, 
and  manifestly  not  a  dissipated  wreck. 

"He  has  fainted!"  she  said,  and  she  began  to 
search  in  her  hand  bag  for  her  bottle  of  smelling 
salts. 

The  policeman  straightened  up  and  watched  her. 
She  was  dressed  in  the  shirt-waisted,  tailored  suit 
of  the  business  woman  of  that  day.  She  looked  as 
trim  and  proper  as  a  school-teacher.  The  eye  of 
the  law  acquitted  her  of  any  predatory  designs 
upon  the  helpless,  and  then  relapsed  into  official 
indifference  again,  as  far  as  she  was  concerned. 

She  sat  down  beside  the  artist,  supported  him 
against  her  shoulder,  and  held  the  salts  to  his  nose. 
The  officer  unbent  to  pick  up  the  fallen  hat  and 
drop  it  on  its  owner's  insensible  head. 

The  man  came  to  his  senses  with  a  tremulous 
long  breath.  "What?"  he  said,  bewildered.  "Oh! 
Yes.  Thanks." 

His  teeth  chattered  suddenly,  as  loud  as  cas 
tanets.  It  was  a  chilly,  misted  April  night.  He 

[9] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

sat  up  and  straightened  his  hat  with  a  shaking 
hand,  as  if  reasserting  his  right  to  privacy  and 
independence. 

She  put  away  her  smelling  salts  and  rose. 

The  policeman  resumed  his  beat  without  a  word. 

She  hesitated,  looking  after  him  as  he  went. 

She  asked  the  man  on  the  bench:  "Can  you  get 
home  all  right?" 

"I  could,"  he  said,  hoarsely,  "if  the  sidewalks 
wouldn't  teeter." 

"Where  do  you  live?" 

He  thought  a  moment.  "That's  so!"  he  said. 
He  laughed  to  himself,  and  it  was  a  self-conscious 
laugh.  "I  don't  need  to  go  home."  He  passed  his 
hand  over  his  forehead,  shoving  back  his  hat.  "I 
am  home." 

When  she  sat  down  again,  on  the  edge  of  the 
seat,  turned  sideways  toward  him,  he  said:  "That's 
right.  Have  a  chair." 

He  had  delicate  features  of  a  dark  pallor,  girl 
ishly  long  eyelashes,  soft  eyes,  a  weak  but  amiable 
mouth.  She  ignored  his  facetiousness  as  if  she 
were  a  trained  nurse  who  understood  the  feeble 
jocularities  of  weakness. 

"Have  you  had  anything  to  eat?" 

"I've  lost  my  appetite.  ...  I  lost  it  two  or 
three  days  ago." 

She  took  his  drawings  from  him.  "You're  an 
artist?" 

"Thank  you,"  he  said. 

[10] 


HENRI  ANTHON 


She  frowned.    "I  asked  you  if  you  were'9 

"I'd  be  willing  to  leave  it  to  you." 

"I  don't  know  anything  about  it,"  she  explained, 
exasperated.  "I'm  a  stenographer." 

"Well,  why  not?"  he  replied.  "We  can't  all 
starve." 

She  rose  impatiently,  with  the  drawings  in  her 
hand.  "If  you're  willing  to  let  me,"  she  said,  in 
a  tone  of  defensive  harshness,  "I  can  get  you  some 
thing  to  eat  in  a  restaurant."  And  she  added,  to 
soften  it:  "I've  not  had  dinner,  myself.  I  was 
kept  late — in  the  office." 

"Delighted,  of  course."  He  tried  to  get  to  his 
feet  with  an  air  of  gallant  eagerness,  but  his  legs 
seemed  to  fail  him.  He  stumbled  and  swayed.  She 
caught  his  arm  to  steady  him.  "If  you — "  he 
gasped — "have  some  place — to  lie  down." 

"Haven't  you  any  friends?" 

He  shook  his  head,  trying  to  control  the  trem 
bling  of  his  jaw. 

She  looked  around  her  vaguely,  embarrassed.  "I 
suppose  I " 

"I  don't  wish  to  boast,"  he  said,  almost  in  a 
whisper,  "but  I  haven't  even  any  acquaintances." 

"I  suppose  I  could  get  a  cab.  My  room's  on 
Twenty-third  Street.  Near  Fourth  Avenue."  I 

He  turned  unsteadily  in  that  direction.  "It's  my 
head.  Not  my  legs.  I  can  walk."  -. 

She  took  his  arm  in  silence.  It  was  as  thin  as  a 
wrist,  and  he  was  shaking  continuously,  either  from 

2  [11] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

weakness  or  from  the  cold.  They  started  slowly 
toward  Twenty-third  Street.  "I'm — I'm  sorry  to 
refuse  an  invitation  to  dinner,"  he  apologized, 
"but  I  really  couldn't  eat — just  yet." 

His  voice  went  hoarse  toward  the  end  of  his 
sentence.  He  cleared  his  throat  to  pretend  that 
it  was  not  the  hoarseness  of  exhaustion.  That 
touched  her. 

"Don't  talk,"  she  said.  "I  can  give  you  some 
dinner." 

"Thanks."  He  coughed  again.  "Do  you  live 
alone?" 

Unfortunately,  his  tone  sounded  as  nearly  flir 
tatious  as  he  had  strength  to  make  it.  She  replied, 
flatly,  curtly,  defensively: 

"Yes.  I  live  alone.  My  name  is  Aspinwall. 
'  Grace  Aspinwall.  I  work  in  an  architect's  office, 
doing  shorthand  and  typewriting.  My  people 
don't  live  in  New  York.  I'm  alone  here.  My 
room's  in  a  building  where  there  are  studios,  but 
it  isn't  a  studio.  I  don't  know  anybody  in  the 
house,  and  no  one  knows  me.  I  never  spoke  to  any 
one  in  the  street  before,  and  I  don't  suppose  I  ever 
will  again." 

He  made  a  deprecating  sound. 
''  "The  policeman  seemed  to  think  you'd  been 
drinking.  I  saw  that  you'd  fainted.  Your  draw 
ings  had  fallen  on  the  walk.  I  picked  them  up. 
That's  how  I  knew  you  were  an  artist.  I  don't 
want  you  to  misunderstand  me." 

[121 


HENRI  ANTHON 


"It  would  be  difficult,"  he  murmured. 

"Very  well,  then."  She  turned  him  east  toward 
Fourth  Avenue. 

He  sighed.  "Well,"  he  said,  in  a  shivering 
imitation  of  her  manner,  "my  name's  Henry 
Anthon.  I  came  here,  several  months  ago,  from 
Columbus,  under  the  illusion  that  I  was  an  illus 
trator.  I  arrived  with  very  little  money  and  I 
spent  half  of  it  the  first  week.  I've  been  going  the 
rounds  of  the  magazine  offices,  with  those  draw 
ings,  like  a  beggar  showing  his  sores " 

"It  doesn't  matter,"  she  interrupted.  "You 
needn't  tell  me.  I  just  wanted  you  to  understand 
that  I'm  not  the  sort  of  person " 


"Pardon  me,"  he  said.  "I'm  physically  weak — 
and  financially  prostrate — but  I  still  have  moments 
of  lucidity.  I  can  see  that  you're  not  the  sort  of 
person ' 

"Very  well,"  she  ended  it.  "That's  all  that's 
necessary." 

He  glanced  at  her  sidelong  and  smiled  to  him 
self.  She  had  a  clear-cut  profile,  regular  but 
severe.  She  could  have  been  a  beauty  if  she  had 
given  her  mind  to  it,  but  she  denied  her  charm  with 
an  expression  of  face  that  carried  her  fine  features 
as  if  they  were  a  weakness  to  be  overcome  and  a 
temptation  to  be  on  her  guard  against. 

Anthon  once  said  of  her:  "She's  as  beautiful  as 
one  of  those  Grecian  temples  on  Fifth  Avenue — 
that  turn  out  to  be  savings  banks."  And  Anthon 

f  131 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

always  had  a  Bohemian  pose  of  disrespect  for 
savings  banks. 

She  led  him  across  Fourth  Avenue  to  an  old 
house  on  the  north  side  of  Twenty-third  Street. 
It  had  a  second-hand  bookshop  in  its  basement, 
and  offices  and  studios  on  its  upper  floors.  "You'll 
have  to  climb  three  flights,"  she  warned  him,  in 
the  hallway. 

"If  you'll  go  ahead  and  open  your  door,"  he 
said,  "I'll  get  up — in  time." 

"No.    I'll  help  you." 

"Please  don't,"  he  begged.  "You  couldn't,  un 
less  you  carried  me."  She  took  his  trembling  arm 
again.  "No.  Please"  he  insisted.  "Let  me  do  it 
my  own  way."  He  leaned  against  the  newel  post, 
resisting  her. 

"Very  well."  She  ran  briskly  up  the  stairs  and 
disappeared. 

He  followed,  step  by  step,  steadying  himself 
with  a  shaking  grip  on  the  banister,  lifting  his  knees 
as  if  he  were  pulling  his  feet  out  of  sucking  mud. 
At  the  first  landing  he  sat  down  a  moment  to  get 
his  breath.  He  finished  the  second  flight  on  all 
fours. 

She  saw  him  from  the  hall  above,  having  opened 
her  door,  lit  her  gas  jet,  and  returned  to  look  for 
him;  and  she  stood  clutching  the  balustrade  and 
biting  her  lips  as  she  watched. 

At  the  second  landing  he  collapsed.  She  took 
off  her  hat  and  coat,  threw  them  into  her  room, 

[14] 


HENRI  ANTHON 


and  hurried  down  to  him.  Lifting  him  to  a  sitting 
posture,  she  put  one  of  his  arms  around  her  neck, 
gripping  his  wrist,  and  took  him  around  the  waist 
with  her  free  arm,  and  raised  him  to  his  feet.  He 
muttered  some  feeble  remonstrance.  She  carried 
him  up  the  final  flight,  in  that  way,  silently,  with  a 
steady  strength  that  was  part  of  her  practical 
efficiency. 

Her  room — a  narrow  hall  bedroom — had  a  studio 
couch  along  its  wall,  with  the  head  to  the  one 
window.  She  lowered  him  to  the  couch  in  her 
arms,  and  took  off  his  hat,  and  arranged  the 
cushions  for  his  head  while  she  held  him  against 
her  breast.  And  she  stretched  him  out  finally  on 
his  back,  unresisting,  with  his  eyes  closed,  twitch 
ing  and  shuddering  helplessly  in  the  spasms  of  an 
internal  chill. 

She  did  not  stand  to  look  at  him.  Flushed  and 
breathing  shortly  through  dilated  nostrils,  her  lips 
pressed  together  in  defiance  of  the  conventions,  she 
hastened  to  shut  and  lock  the  door.  Then  she 
set  about  lighting  her  gas  stove  to  make  a  hot 
drink  for  him,  hurried  by  the  audible  shaking  of 
the  couch  behind  her,  though  she  did  not  turn  to 
glance  at  him. 

The  stove  was  a  little  stand  of  two  burners, 
connected  by  a  rubber  pipe  with  a  stopcock  below 
the  gas  jet;  and  it  stood  on  the  top  of  a  bookcase 
whose  lower  shelves,  curtained  in  green  rep,  held 
her  pans,  dishes,  and  provisions.  She  emptied  a 

[15] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

half  bottle  of  milk  into  a  saucepan  and  put  it  on 
to  heat. 

A  green-rep  screen  beside  the  door  hid  a  wash 
bowl  and  a  mirror.  This  was  her  dressing  room. 
When  she  had  filled  a  kettle  with  water  there,  and 
set  it  on  the  stove,  she  took  a  typewriter  from  a 
small  table  at  the  foot  of  the  couch  and  spread  a 
tablecloth.  She  was  quick  and  anxious,  but  com 
petent  in  all  her  movements,  absorbed,  with  a 
capable  grace. 

She  had  a  bowl  of  milk  hot  in  no  time.  When 
she  turned  to  him  with  it  she  found  him  raising 
himself  uncertainly  on  his  elbow.  "Don't  get  up," 
she  ordered. 

She  sat  down  beside  him,  supporting  him  with 
an  arm,  and,  holding  the  bowl  between  her  knees, 
she*  began  to  feed  the  milk  to  him  with  a  table 
spoon,  maternally,  but  with  an  embarrassed  flush 
of  color.  He  could  not  see  her  face.  He  watched 
her  hand,  sipped  the  milk,  and  said,  gratefully, 
"It's  immense!" 

When  the  bowl  was  empty  she  got  up  to  let  him 
sink  back  on  the  cushions,  and  she  stood  to  look 
down  on  him  with  a  first  faint  twinkle  of  amuse 
ment  in  reply  to  his  smile. 

"Thanks,"  he  said.  He  had  stopped  shivering. 
"I  feel  better  already." 

"I  can't  give  you  a  real  dinner,"  she  explained. 
"I  have  only  breakfast  things  here." 

"You  needn't  worry  about  that,"  he  said.    "You 

[16] 


HEMRI  ANTHON 


can  give  me  last  Monday's  breakfast.  I  haven't 
had  it  yet." 

He  looked  very  young  and  boyish  in  spite  of  his 
unshaven  chin.  He  was  dressed  in  thin  clothes, 
worn  shiny,  but  well  brushed.  His  feet  were  small 
in  low  shoes  that  were  shabby — and  silk  socks. 
There  was  about  him  an  air  of  unbeaten  saucy 
pride  that  touched  her. 

"I'll  give  you  tea,"  she  smiled,  "and  a  poached 
egg." 

Hers  was  a  slow  smile,  unexpectedly  dimpled; 
and  though  it  was  a  little  withdrawn  and  aloof,  it 
had  a  quality  of  forgiveness  that  made  it  seem 
sympathetic. 

"May  I  help  you?    Not  that  I  know  how!" 

She  shook  her  head.  "It  won't  take  me  a 
moment." 

He  watched  her  breaking  the  eggs  and  decant 
ing  them  from  their  shells  into  the  hot  water, 
measuring  the  heaping  spoonfuls  of  tea,  filling  the 
teapot  from  the  steaming  kettle,  and  propping  the 
slices  of  bread  on  the  sides  of  the  toaster.  The 
gas  sang;  the  toast  smelled;  the  girl  was  good- 
looking. 

"I  think  this  is  great  fun,"  he  said. 

"Do  you?"  She  did  not  raise  her  eyes  from  her 
work. 

"I  wouldn't  have  missed  it  for — not  for  an  order 
from  a  magazine." 

"No?" 

[17] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

"I  understand,  now,  why  I  didn't  get  an  order — 
and  why  they  turned  me  out  of  my  room — and  why 
I  fainted  in  the  street." 

"Yes?" 

"Yes.  It  was  so  I'd  enjoy  this  properly.  Phil 
osophic  reflection:  Death  is  made  painful  so  you'll 
enjoy  arriving  in  heaven." 

She  busied  herself  setting  the  table,  without 
replying.  And  there  was  something  tragic  in  her 
face.  He  saw  it. 

"What  are  you  thinking?"  he  asked,  pertly. 

She  went  back  to  the  stove.  "That  it  was 
lucky  for  you  I  had  smelling  salts.  You  might 
have  found  yourself  in  jail." 

"In  hell,  in  fact,  instead  of  heaven.  Think  of 
that!  Why  do  you  carry  smelling  salts?" 

"I  fainted,  once,  myself." 

"Oh."  Her  tone  had  laconic  implications;  he 
considered  them.  "Have  you  been  through  it, 
too?"  he  asked.  She  did  not  answer.  She  pre 
tended  to  be  preoccupied  with  the  eggs.  "Of 
course  you  have ! "  he  said.  "That's  why  you  helped 
me.  Where  did  you  come  to?" 

"I  don't  want  to  talk  about  it." 

"You  ought  to,"  he  advised,  cheerfully.  "Noth 
ing's  half  so  bad  if  you  talk  about  it.  You  think 
it's  a  fox  gnawing  at  your  vitals,  and  then  you 
talk  about  it  and  find  it's — well,  a  flea." 

Her  silence  reproved  his  indelicacy  in  mention 
ing  fleas.  She  brought  him  his  eggs,  his  toast,  and 

[18] 


HENRI  ANTHON 


a  cup  of  tea  on  a  breakfast  tray.  "Can  you  prop 
yourself  up  in  the  corner?  And  take  this  on  your 
knees?" 

He  piled  the  cushions  behind  him.  "I  know 
you,"  he  said.  "You'll  do  anything  in  the  world 
for  a  person  except  give  him  your  confidence." 
She  laid  her  own  place  at  the  table,  and  sat  down 
to  it.  "As  for  me,"  he  went  on,  "I  have  what 
some  one  called  'the  terrible  gift  of  familiarity' — 
although  I  don't  suppose  I  have  half  your  kind 
liness." 

They  began  to  eat. 

She  asked,  "Have  you  been — turned  out  of  your 
rooms?" 

He  nodded,  busy.  "Room.  Singular.  I  owe 
them  three  weeks'  rent.  They've  kept  my  trunk. 
Nothing  in  it.  Everything  pawned." 

"What  do  you  intend  to  do?" 

"Well,  if  this  sort  of  thing  will  only  happen 
when  I  faint,  I'll  keep  on  fainting." 

She  considered  him  over  the  rim  of  her  teacup 
as  she  drank.  In  spite  of  his  hunger,  he  ate  good- 
manneredly.  "Have  you  written  home?" 

"Did  you?"  he  asked.     "When  you  fainted?" 

She  colored,  putting  down  her  cup. 

"You  wouldn't  think  I  had  any  pride,"  he  said, 
"but  I  have.  I'd  die  before  I'd  acknowledge  to 
them  that  I'm  defeated.  They  believe  in  me. 
They  think  I'm  a  genius.  Maybe  I  am.  I  talk 
well,  don't  you  think?" 

[19] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

She  replied,"  I  think  I'd  better  do  you  another  egg." 

"Besides,"  he  grinned,  "I've  been  like  Ibsen. 
I  couldn't  write  letters,  because  I  couldn't  afford 
the  stamps.  This  food  is  going  to  my  head.  Don't 
mind  what  I  say.  It's  the  champagne — which  you 
pretend  is  tea.  Tell  me  if  I  talk  too  much."  He 
was  flushed.  His  eyes  were  feverish.  He  drank 
the  tea  in  excited,  vinous  sips. 

She  said,  from  the  stove:  "I  don't  know.  It's 
so  long  since  I  heard  anybody  talk."  And  she  said 
it  as  constrainedly  as  if  it  were  a  confession  that 
had  been  wrung  from  her. 

"I  know,"  he  chattered.  "They'll  speak  to  you 
if  you  speak  to  them,  but  you  can't  make  them 
talk.  I  was  a  week  in  a  boarding  house.  I  used 
to  talk  at  the  table.  It  was  like  talking  in  the  top 
gallery  of  the  Metropolitan.  As  if  I  interrupted 
the  music — of  their  mastication.  They  almost 
hissed  me." 

It  was  not  what  she  had  meant.  "No  one  speaks 
in  the  office,"  she  explained.  "They're  too  busy. 
Except  to  dictate  letters." 

"Aren't  they  wonderful?"  he  cried.  "I  keep 
wanting  to  stop  them  on  the  streets  and  say,  'No, 
but  tell  me,  when  do  you  live?" 

She  brought  him  his  eggs  and  refilled  his  teacup. 

"Please  eat  something  yourself,"  he  begged.  "I 
don't  mind  doing  all  the  talking,  but  eating!"  He 
rattled  his  knife  and  fork  on  his  plate  gayly.  "All 
that  sort  of  music  is  best  for  four  hands — duets." 

[20] 


HENRI  ANTHON 


She  replied,  with  a  self-conscious  awkwardness: 
"I'm  not  very  hungry.  And  I'm  afraid  I  never 
talk  much." 

However,  she  took  his  drawings  from  the  chair 
on  which  she  had  left  them,  beside  the  door,  and 
she  sat  down  at  the  table,  to  sip  her  tea,  with  her 
eyes  on  the  top  picture.  He  waited  for  her  verdict, 
amusedly,  enjoying  his  eggs. 

The  first  drawing  was  a  pen-and-ink  design,  in 
an  Aubrey  Beardsley  manner.  It  showed  a  great 
number  of  half-draped  figures  groping  with  out 
stretched  hands  through  a  sort  of  forest  of  bamboo 
stems.  Some  of  the  figures  were  much  impeded  by 
their  heavy  draperies  that  dragged  behind  them 
and  clogged  their  feet.  And  their  eyes  were  closed. 

"Well,  what  do  you  make  of  that?" 

"What  is  it?"  she  asked,  frowning.  "What  do 
you  call  it?" 

"I  don't  know."  He  grinned.  "That's  the  way 
it  came  to  me.  What  do  you  call  it?" 

"How  do  you  mean,  that's  the  way  it  came  to 

you?" 

He  gulped  his  tea.  "Why,  that's  the  way  I 
work.  That's  why  I'm  hopeless  as  an  illustrator. 
I  can't  tell  what  I'm  going  to  do  till  I  see  it  on  the 
paper.  And  I  don't  know  what  it  is,  when  it's 
done,  any  more  than  anyone  else  does." 

"I  don't  think  I  understand  what  you  mean." 
"Well,  look."     He  pantomimed  it.     "You  sit 
down  in  front  of  your  drawing  board  with  a  sheet 

[21] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

of  blank  paper  on  it.  Perfectly  blank  and  smooth 
— or  it  will  interfere.  Then  you  stare  at  it  and 
wait."  He  stared  hypnotically  at  his  tray.  "Un 
til  slowly  you  begin  to  get  a  picture  on  it.  As  if  it 
were  developing  on  a  photographic  plate — only 
dim.  And  you  begin  to  draw  it.  And  it  comes 
clearer  all  around  what  you're  drawing.  Till 
you're  finished.  And  it's  like  that." 

She  looked  from  him  to  the  drawing,  puzzled. 
"I  see." 

"When  it's  done,  you  make  up  names  for  it,  if 
you  want  to.  You  can  call  that  one  4Life,'  say — 
or  'Love' — or  'Blind  Souls.'  Evidently,  it's  people 
trying  to  find  one  another.  That's  what  it  looks 
like,  anyway.  I  don't  know,  any  more  than  you  do." 

"I  see." 

She  was  listening  to  an  explanation  of  Anthon's 
art  that  would  have  interested  some  of  his  later 
critics.  It  did  not  interest  her  as  much  as  it  might 
have  if  she  had  understood  how  odd  an  individual 
his  art  really  was.  She  thought  it  merely  beyond 
her.  She  looked  at  the  drawings  and  said  nothing. 

Many  of  them  contained  nude  figures.  She 
turned  them  over  self-consciously.  He  laughed. 
"That's  another  difficulty  about  the  magazines," 
he  said.  "I  always  see  people  without  the  dis 
guises  they  wear.  If  I  put  clothes  on  them  they 
look  like  dressed-up  monkeys  to  me — organ  grind 
ers'  monkeys." 

One  drawing  seemed  to  be  a  nightmare  of  Broad- 

[22] 


HENRI  ANTHON 


way,  and  she  was  struck  by  the  way  he  had  lined 
up  the  buildings  in  perspective.  She  suggested 
that  he  might  get  work  in  an  architect's  office. 
He  replied:  "Or  as  a  bricklayer.  I  know  as  much 
of  one  as  the  other." 

"Well,"  she  asked,  at  last,  "what  do  you  intend 
to  do?" 

"I  wish  I  knew,"  he  said.    "I'd  tell  you." 

She  got  up  to  take  his  dishes  from  him.  He  lay 
on  his  back,  his  hands  clasped  on  his  chest,  fed, 
relaxed,  and  happy.  He  began  to  talk  about  him 
self  lazily. 

His  art,  as  he  saw  it,  had  no  commercial  value. 
And  there  was  apparently  no  way  of  giving  it  any. 
At  home,  he  said,  in  Columbus,  he  had  worked  for 
a  time  on  a  newspaper,  making  chalk  plates,  but 
his  work  in  that  line  had  always  been  amateurish. 
"I  couldn't  do  newspaper  work  here,"  he  con 
fessed.  "I  couldn't  compete.  I'm  not  in  their 
class."  And  he  had  once  done  ads.  for  shop  win 
dows — lettering,  chiefly — but  New  York  had  no 
windows  for  that  sort  of  home-made  advertising. 
"I  can't  do  it  as  well  as  the  print  shops.  I'm  not 
professional  enough."  As  a  matter  of  fact,  he  had 
been  unsuccessful  in  any  form  of  applied  art  at 
home.  "1  can  only  do  these  weird  things.  I 
thought  there'd  be  a  market  for  them  here.  Ap 
parently,  there  isn't." 

She  listened  arid  watched,  her  elbows  on  the 
table,  her  chin  in  her  hands.  He  lay  smiling  at  the 

[23] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

ceiling,  and  admitting  his  defeat  with  an  air  of 
languid  detachment. 

"The  truth  of  the  matter  is,"  he  said,  "I'm  so 
sleepy,  all  at  once,  that  I  don't  even  know  what 
I'm  trying  to  say.  I  think  if  I  had  about  five 
minutes  — 

His  eyes  closed,  and  he  was  asleep  as  suddenly 
as  if  he  had  fainted. 

It  was  some  minutes  before  she  realized  that  he 
was  unconscious  of  her.  Then,  although  she  did 
not  move,  a  curious  change  came  over  her  face — a 
look  of  still  and  penetrating  contemplation,  wide 
eyed  and  clairvoyant,  as  she  studied  him.  He 
rested  like  a  corpse,  in  deep  exhaustion,  his  head 
sunken  in  the  cushions,  his  body  incredibly  thin 
and  flat,  his  breathing  scarcely  perceptible,  his  face 
sad  in  the  meek  surrender  of  closed  eyelids  and 
quiet  lips.  He  had  something  of  the  dignified 
indifference  of  death  about  him,  and  all  the  pathos 
of  pitiful  humanity.  His  mask  of  smiling  egotism 
had  been  touchingly  laid  aside.  He  seemed  to 
have  collapsed  inside  his  clothes,  and  they  were 
bunched  and  bagged  and  wrinkled  on  him  with 
no  pretense  now  of  nattiness.  His  feet,  toeing  in 
helplessly,  showed  the  holes  in  the  soles  of  his  shoes, 
without  shame. 

It  was  not  merely  these  aspects  of  him  that  were 
reflected  in  her  expression  as  she  regarded  him, 
item  by  item,  from  his  lank  hair  to  his  worn  heels. 
She,  too,  had  laid  aside  a  mask.  She  studied  him — 

£241 


HENRI  ANTHON 


as  if  she  were  a  child  that  was  no  longer  afraid,  no 
longer  self-defensive — with  complete  interest,  al 
most  hungrily.  In  the  silence  and  loneliness  of 
that  room  where  she  had  never  had  a  guest  she 
appraised  him  as  if  he  were  some  unconscious 
castaway  on  a  desert  island  where  she  had  been 
isolated.  She  looked  and  looked,  and  thought  and 
thought,  with  no  more  movement  than  the  shift 
ing  of  her  eyes  from  his  face  to  his  hands,  from 
his  hands  to  his  feet.  And  in  the  record  of  their 
intercourse,  those  silent  minutes  were  of  more  impor 
tance  than  all  that  had  been  said  between  them. 

She  turned  from  him  to  his  drawings,  and 
regarded  them  as  judicially  as  if  they  were  the 
exhibits  before  the  court.  When  she  rose,  at  last, 
it  was  with  the  inscrutable  calm  air  of  a  mind 
made  up.  She  went  to  her  clothes  closet  and  took 
a  bathrobe  from  its  hook — a  serviceable  garment 
of  Turkish  toweling — and  spreading  it  gently  over 
him  she  let  it  fall  to  cover  him  from  neck  to 
ankles.  He  did  not  stir.  She  looked  down  at  his 
placid  face.  There  was  something  poetic  in  its 
young  exhaustion.  She  stared  at  him  a  long  time. 
Then  she  gathered  up  the  dishes  and  went  to 
wash  them  in  her  hand  bowl  noiselessly;  and  all  her 
movements  were  slow,  absorbed,  contented;  and 
although  she  did  not  quite  smile,  a  pleasant  reverie 
brooded  in  her  eyes. 

She  sat  down  again  when  she  had  tidied  every 
thing,  and  she  prepared  to  read,  but  her  mind 

[25] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

wandered  from  her  book  and  she  gazed  at  him  in 
an  absent-minded  muse.  He  slept  like  a  child. 
She  reached  from  her  bookshelf,  stealthily,  a  type 
written  manuscript  in  a  loose-leaf  binder,  and 
began  to  turn  over  the  carbon  copies  of  a  great 
number  of  brief  poems  which  she  had  filed  there; 
and  by  the  furtive  way  she  glanced  at  him  as  she 
read — as  if  she  were  afraid  that  he  might  wake 
and  catch  her  with  them — it  was  evident  that  the 
verses  were  her  own  composition. 

He  did  not  wake.  She  hid  her  manuscript 
behind  the  bookcase,  took  a  sheet  of  typewriter 
paper  from  the  drawer  of  the  table,  and  wrote  on 
it,  in  a  firm,  angular  hand:  "Gone  to  some  friends 
for  the  night.  Be  back  in  time  to  cook  breakfast." 
She  laid  this  on  the  pillow  beside  his  head,  covered 
his  feet  with  a  skirt  from  the  closet,  put  on  her  hat 
and  coat,  packed  some  things  in  a  hand  bag,  turned 
down  the  light,  and  went  out  on  tiptoe,  closing  the 
door  gently  behind  her. 

She  was  not  going  to  friends.  She  had  no  friends 
to  go  to.  She  was  going  to  a  dollar-a-night  hotel 
on  Fourth  Avenue  where  she  knew  no  questions 
would  be  asked.  She  had  been  there  before. 


That  was  their  beginning. 

By  the  end  of  a  week  he  was  working  in  her  room 
every  day,  sleeping  in  a  Third  Avenue  doss  house 

[26] 


HENRI  ANTIION 


where  he  could  get  a  bed  for  fifteen  cents  a  night, 
and  sharing  her  breakfasts  and  her  dinners.  He 
did  not  eat  any  midday  meal. 

"That's  my  contribution  to  my  support,"  he 
said.  He  produced  a  number  of  drawings,  but  sold 
none.  "I'm  educating  the  editors,"  he  explained. 
"The  public  is  next'9  He  accepted  from  her  what 
little  money  he  needed,  without  any  pretense  that 
he  was  merely  borrowing  it.  "I'll  not  try  to  escape 
the  obligations  of  gratitude,"  he  said,  "by  assur 
ing  you  that  I'll  pay  you  back.  I  hope  you'll  never 
need  it  enough  for  that.  But  don't  give  me  more 
than  twenty -five  cents  at  a  time.  Greenbacks  are 
like  checks  to  me.  I  don't  like  to  carry  them 
around  uncashed."  And  he  talked  a  great  deal 
about  himself  without  learning,  in  return,  any 
thing  about  her. 

His  father,  he  told  her,  was  a  maker  of  picture 
frames  who  sold  art  materials,  photographic  sup 
plies,  stationery,  and  magazines  in  a  little  shop  in 
which  his  wife  assisted  him  behind  the  counter. 
He  had  never  allowed  his  son  to  work  there.  He 
always  said:  "I  might' ve  been  an  artist,  myself, 
if  I  hadn't  been  taught  a  trade."  And  he  refused  to 
let  the  boy  help  to  earn  his  living  until  he  was  able 
to  do  it  with  his  pencil — by  lettering  display  cards 
for  the  family  shop  window.  The  elder  Anthon, 
apparently,  had  talked  about  his  son  and  boasted 
of  his  genius  until  he  had  convinced  everyone  of 
it,  including  the  boy  himself.  Consequently,  young 

3  [27] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

Anthon's  departure  for  New  York,  to  make  him 
self  famous,  had  been  almost  a  civic  event.  And 
there  was  no  possibility  of  going  back  to  Columbus 
defeated.  "Broad  Street,  Ohio,"  he  said,  "would 
never  forgive  me." 

I  have  often  wondered  what  Columbus  thought 
of  the  monograph  on  Henri  Anthon  that  appeared 
in  the  English  edition  of  International  Art'  a  few 
months  ago.  "Born,"  it  began,  "in  Vienna  on 
May  13,  1873,  of  a  French  mother  and  an  English 
father — an  itinerant  artist  of  whom  nothing  is 
known — he  emigrated  at  an  early  age  to  America 
with  his  parents,  who  settled  in  a  city  of  Ohio, 
called  Columbus  after  the  discoverer  of  the  con 
tinent.  The  primitive  culture  of  a  frontier  town 
gave  Anthon  pere  little  opportunity  to  practice  his 
profession  as  a  miniaturist,  and  he  was  driven  to 
support  his  family  by  opening  a  stationer's  shop 
in  which  he  also  made  picture  frames  and  sold  the 
atrocious  steel  engravings  of  the  period." 

That  Anthon  never  told  Grace  Aspinwall  any 
such  fairy  tale  about  his  parents  is  a  tribute, 
probably,  to  the  penetrating  candor  of  her  glance. 
She  was  a  country  girl.  She  admitted  it.  She 
admitted  that  she  had  been  born  on  a  farm  and 
that  she  had  taught  in  the  village  school.  She 
had  studied  shorthand  at  night  and  she  had  come  to 
New  York  as  a  stenographer,  simply,  as  she  said, 
"to  get  away."  It  was  not  till  the  second  week  of 
their  acquaintanceship  that  she  confessed  she  was 

[28] 


HENRI  ANTHON 


trying  to  sell  poems  to  the  magazines  and  he 
learned  that  she  had  come  to  New  York  with  an 
ambition  to  set  up  as  an  author. 

"Now  I  know  you!"  he  cried.  "I  recognize  you 
now!  I  thought  your  profile  was  familiar  when  I 
first  saw  you.  Only,  in  all  the  pictures  I've  seen 
of  you  you'd  lost  your  nose.  You're  the  Sphinx." 

At  his  first  "Now  I  know  you!"  she  had  turned 
suddenly  pale.  And  she  blushed  with  guilty  relief 
when  he  ended,  "You're  the  Sphinx."  He  saw  it 
and  went  on  jocularly:  "Talk  about  a  woman 
keeping  a  secret!  What  else  have  you  got  hidden 
behind  that  stony  calm?" 

They  were  dining  together  in  her  room.  She 
murmured,  "Don't  be  silly,"  trying  to  hide  her 
confusion  by  turning  to  look  back  at  the  coffee 
pot  on  the  gas  stove. 

He  reached  her  hand  and  held  her.  "Here,"  lie 
said.  "Play  iair.  I've  not  tried  to  conceal  any 
thing  from  you.  And  you've  taken  it  all  without 
giving  back  a  word." 

She  did  not  try  to  release  her  hand,  but  she  sat 
with  her  head  averted.  "I'm  not  concealing 
anything." 

"Yes,  you  are.  You're  concealing  yourself. 
And  some  day  you'll  blame  me  for  not  understand 
ing  you." 

"You  don't  have  to  understand  me." 

"Certainly,  I  do — if  I'm  not  to  do  you  an 
injustice." 

[29] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

"I  don't  care  whether  you  do  me  an  injustice  or 
not."  She  went  to  stir  the  coffee,  needlessly. 

"Fine!"  he  said.  "Give  the  beggar  a  meal  and 
slam  the  door  on  him.  He  can  eat  it  on  the  front 
steps." 

"No,"  she  answered,  in  a  shaking  voice,  her  back 
to  him,  "it  isn't  that.  I  can't  talk  about  myself — 
to  anyone.  I  want  to  forget  it." 

Her  tone  moved  him.  He  went  to  her  and  put 
his  arm  around  her.  She  trembled  but  stood  firm. 
"You've  been  doing  everything  in  the  world  for 
me,"  he  said.  "I  can't  make  any  return  except — 
in  sympathy." 

She  murmured:  "Don't!  I  don't  want  to  be — 
unhappy — again . ' ' 

It  was,  after  all,  a  surrender.  He  took  it  as  such. 
"All  right,"  he  said.  "Beggars  can't  be  choosers." 
He  kissed  her  on  the  ear,  inconsequentially,  over 
her  shoulder,  and  went  back  to  his  place  at  the  table. 

And  that  began  his  love  making. 

6 

He  had  read  largely  of  French  literature  in  cheap 
translations,  and  his  idea  of  a  love  affair  was  fic 
tional  and  French.  That  is  to  say,  a  love  affair  to 
him  was  a  sort  of  romantic  escape  from  the  responsi 
bilities  and  realities  of  life  into  something  spirited, 
poetic,  adventurous — and  predatory.  The  obvious 
truth  is  that  the  instinct  of  affection  in  him  carried 

[30] 


HENRI  ANTHON 


little  of  its  normal  human  desire  to  protect  and  be 
protected.  He  had  been  the  spoiled  darling  of  his 
parents.  Because  of  his  early  talent  they  had  always 
treated  him  as  if  he  were  a  young  god.  Even  in 
his  affection  for  his  mother  he  must  have  been  too 
superior  to  feel  a  desire  for  protection  and  too  selfish 
to  feel  a  desire  to  protect.  Consequently,  like  many 
a  spoiled  child,  he  was  now  incapable  of  real  love. 

Of  course,  he  was  as  unaware  of  it  as  Grace 
Aspinwall  was.  He  probably  thought  himself  a 
very  gallant  lover.  He  was  very  gay  and  humorous 
about  it.  He  invented  teasing  names  for  her — the 
Sphinx,  Aglaia,  Diana,  the  Vestal  Virgin — and 
worked  her  into  his  drawings  in  every  attitude  of 
cold  and  godlike  inscrutability.  She  took  it  very 
doubtfully  at  first,  and  then  with  the  air  rather  of 
a  mother  whose  practical  devotion  is  being  accepted 
humorously  by  a  witty  son.  She  did  not  altogether 
refuse  his  caresses,  but  she  received  them  as  if  she 
knew  that  they  meant  nothing. 

"Very  well,  Young  Pathos,"  he  would  say.  "I'll 
make  you  look  happy  yet." 

She  wrote  a  little  poem,  secretly,  to  interpret  a 
fairy  drawing  that  he  had  made,  and  she  sold  the 
poem  and  its  illustration  to  a  children's  magazine, 
without  telling  him  what  she  had  done  until  she 
received  the  check  for  it. 

"I  kiss,"  he  said,  "the  hand  that  feeds  me";  and 
he  saluted  her  bent  wrist  cavalierly.  "Now,  let's 
have  a  bust." 

[31] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

No.  He  had  to  have  summer  clothes.  It  was 
June.  And  she  went  with  him  on  Saturday  after 
noon  to  a  men's  outfitters,  like  a  critical  wife,  and 
saw  that  he  got  good  value  for  his  money.  Natu 
rally,  the  clerk  mistook  them  for  a  young  married 
couple,  and  Anthon  teased  her  about  it  on  the 
street.  She  endured  the  teasing  in  a  silence  that 
puzzled  him. 

"I  suppose,"  he  said,  "I'll  have  to  cut  your  heart 
out  before  I  find  what's  going  on  in  it." 

He  found  out  something  a  few  weeks  later. 

She  had  sold  another  poem  and  drawing,  and 
with  the  money  she  rented  the  vacant  studio  ad 
joining  her  room,  and  furnished  it  for  him  surrep 
titiously.  He  was  sincerely  touched  when  she 
showed  him  what  she  had  done. 

"Now  listen  to  me,  Grace,"  he  said.  "I'll  not 
use  it  unless  you'll  share  it  with  me." 

"Share  it?" 

"Yes.  You  might  as  well  marry  me.  You're 
supporting  me  already.  I  can't  do  anything  with 
out  you.  You've  picked  me  out  of  the  gutter  and 
put  me  on  my  feet — more  or  less.  You  might  as 
well  finish  the  job.  You  can't  get  out  of  it  now, 
anyway.  I'm  no  good  without  you." 

"No,"  she  said.    "I  can't." 

"Can't?" 

She  shook  her  head  and,  putting  him  from  her, 
she  went  to  stare  out  the  window. 

"Can't!"  he  repeated,  in  a  low  tone. 

[32] 


HENRI  ANTHON 


"No,"  she  said,  hoarsely.    " I'm  married  already." 

He  put  his  hat  on,  as  if  she  had  turned  him  out. 
He  sat  down  in  helpless  amazement.  "Well,  I'll  be 
damned!" 

She  did  not  speak.  She  remained  at  the  window, 
looking  out  as  tragically  as  if  it  was  her  past  that 
she  saw  there. 

"Who  is  he?"  he  demanded. 

She  would  not  tell  him. 

"Where  is  he?" 

"I  don't  know." 

"But  suppose  he  turns  up  here,"  Anthon  cried, 
"and  finds  you " 

"He  doesn't  want  to  find  me.  He  didn't  want  to 
marry  me.  We  never  spoke  to  each  other  after  we 
came  out  of  the  vestry.  I  left  him  at  the  gate." 

"Oh  well,"  he  said.  "That's  no  marriage  at  all. 
It  wouldn't  take  a  court  five  minutes  to  annul  that." 

She  shook  her  head,  still  at  the  window.    "No." 

"What!" 

She  turned  to  him.  "I  can't  explain  it  and  I  won't 
discuss  it.  But  he  daren't  annul  it,  and  I'll  not." 

"Butwfo/P" 

"Because  I  won't  admit  that  it  happened." 

"Won't  ad What  do  you  mean? " 

"I  mean  that  I'm  married,"  she  said,  "and 
there's  nothing  to  be  done."  And  suddenly,  fling 
ing  out  her  hands,  she  cried:  "I  won't  talk  about 
it !  I  won't— I  won't  talk  about  it ! " 

It  was  a  threat  of  hysteria  and  it  had  the  odd 

[33] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

effect  of  giving  him  back  his  self-possession.  He 
took  off  his  hat.  "Very  well,  Mrs.  John  Doe,"  he 
said.  "If  you  don't  care,  /  don't.  Are  we  going 
to  have  dinner  in  or  are  we  treating  ourselves  to  a 
restaurant?" 

They  went  to  a  restaurant.  They  went  to  a 
play.  They  made,  in  fact,  a  silent  and  preoccupied 
evening  of  it  together.  They  walked  back  to  their 
rooms  as  mute  as  if  they  had  quarreled.  They 
opened  their  separate  doors,  in  the  glimmer  of  the 
hall  light,  morosely. 

"Well,"  he  said,  "good  night!  I  don't  know  why 
in  thunder  I'm  behaving  like  this.  I  haven't  any 
right.  I'm  just  as  grateful " 

"Don't!"  She  put  her  hand  out.  He  made  a 
movement  to  take  it.  She  caught  his  fingers  in  a 
spasmodic  clutch  of  contrition  and  apology — and 
was  gone  before  he  could  speak. 


She  behaved,  next  morning,  as  if  nothing  had 
happened.  She  seemed  interested  only  in  getting 
him  curtains,  a  jute  rug,  a  drawing  table,  a  student 
lamp,  and  another  check  from  a  magazine  to  meet 
their  increased  expenses.  She  failed  in  the  latter 
effort  for  so  long  a  time  that  she  took  one  of  his 
fantastic  architectural  nightmares  to  the  office  and 
persuaded  the  firm  to  give  Anthon  a  trial  in  the 
drafting  room. 

[34] 


HENRI  ANTHON 


"You  cart  work  there  in  the  mornings,"  she 
announced  to  him,  "and  have  your  afternoons 
and  evenings  free.  It  will  more  than  pay  your 
rent." 

" I'm  game,"  he  said.  "Whistler  once  worked  for 
the  Geodetic  Survey,  didn't  he?"  And  he  began 
to  go  to  the  office  with  her,  every  morning,  as  slyly 
dutiful  as  a  mischievous  child  going  to  school. 

Their  relations  were,  apparently,  merely  friendly. 
She  was  more  than  ever  uncommunicative  and  he 
had  no  idea  of  what  was  going  on  in  her  mind.  Yet 
it  was  during  this  period  that  she  wrote  her  mystical 
poem,  "The  Closed  Garden,"  laying  it  down  line  by 
line,  like  the  unblended  vibrating  colors  of  an  impres 
sionistic  painting — each  line  complete  in  itself,  yet 
almost  meaningless  by  itself — in  a  technic  that  un 
consciously  expressed  her  desperate  self -repression. 
If  you  take  that  poem  at  its  face  value,  it  is  merely 
an  oddly  picturesque  dream  of  color  and  music  and 
the  beauty  of  nature  enchanted.  But  read  it  with 
the  understanding  that  she  is  herself  the  closed 
garden,  and  it  is  as  emotional  and  impassioned  as 
the  Song  of  Songs. 

She  was  a  month  writing  it.  She  rarely  added 
more  than  two  or  three  lines  a  day.  She  reread  and 
rewrote  it  chiefly  at  night,  in  her  own  room.  He 
did  not  know  what  she  was  doing.  It  is  doubtful 
whether  she  really  knew  herself. 

She  was  the  victim  of  a  deformity  of  spirit  that 
was  quite  as  fatal  to  happiness  in  love  as  his  la-ck 

[35] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

of  the  protective  instinct.  The  circumstances  of 
her  marriage  evidently  had  given  her  a  shock  that 
had  warped  and  stunted  her  puritanically.  In  her 
poems  she  could  express  the  desires  of  her  creative 
energy  because  they  disguised  themselves  so  that 
she  did  not  recognize  them.  But  in  her  life  and  in 
her  relations  with  Anthon  she  would  not  let  them 
express  themselves  at  all.  She  was  happy  in  a 
maternal  instinct  to  protect  him,  and  she  was 
unhappy  because  in  his  jocular  independence  he 
neither  sought  protection  nor  gave  it.  Like 
Anthon  himself,  she  was  trying  to  live  on  terms 
which  life  will  not  accept.  Their  disaster  was 
inevitable. 

He  began  to  make  friends  at  the  office,  and 
these  friends  came  to  see  him.  Her  position 
was,  at  once,  equivocal.  He  teased  her  about  it. 
"I'm  not  one  to  talk  scandal,"  he  said,  "but 
you'll  not  be  Mrs.  John  Doe  much  longer.  You'll 
be  Mrs.  Don  Juan.  What  are  you  going  to  do 
about  that?" 

He  might  have  known  that  she  would  do  some 
thing  unexpected. 

At  first  she  refused  to  go  on  the  streets  with  him; 
she  ate  rather  furtive  meals  in  his  studio;  and  she 
shut  herself  up  in  her  own  room  whenever  his  bell 
rang.  He  watched  her  amusedly. 

"You  certainly  know  how  to  make  innocence  look 
guilty,"  he  congratulated  her.  "I  think  I'd  better 
tell  them  you're  my  sister." 

[36] 


HENRI  ANTHON 


He  had  to  accept  invitations  without  her.  He 
ate  luncheon  with  another  stenographer,  who  flirted 
as  openly  as  she  chewed  gum.  And  one  evening  he 
went  out  without  making  any  explanation,  remained 
away  till  after  midnight,  and  returned  with  a  car 
nation  in  his  buttonhole. 

"That  girl  will  certainly  marry  me,"  he  warned 
her,  "  if  some  one  else  doesn't.  I'm  wax  in  her  hands. 
I  melt." 

It  was  next  morning  that  she  did  the  unexpected. 

She  came  to  breakfast  with  a  rolled  document  in 
her  hands,  pale,  after  a  sleepless  night.  She  gave 
him  the  paper  as  if  it  were  a  death  warrant.  "What's 
up  now?"  he  asked,  nervously. 

It  was  a  marriage  certificate  to  prove  that  Grace 
Aspinwall  and  Henry  Anthon  had  been  "united  in 
holy  matrimony  "  by  the  curate  of  a  Chicago  church, 
"according  to  the  Form  of  Solemnization  of  Matri 
mony  of  the  Protestant  Episcopal  Church  in  the 
United  States  of  America,  and  in  accordance  with 
the  Laws  of  the  State  of  Illinois." 

For  the  moment  it  convinced  him.  He  had  a 
queer  feeling  that  he  had  dreamed  something  of 
the  sort  and  now  held  in  his  hand  the  evidence 
that  it  had  not  been  a  dream — that  it  had  really 
happened. 

"What!  "he  cried.  "Where  did  you "  And 

then  he  held  the  paper  up  to  the  light  and  dis 
covered  that  the  names  and  the  date  had  been 
altered.  "But  this,"  he  said,  "this  is " 

[37] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

She  gasped,  strangled.  "I've — I've  changed  it. 
It's  the  one  I " 

"But  it's  no  good." 

She  nodded  dumbly.    She  knew  that. 

"Then  why " 

"It  '11  do  to  show.    People  won't  notice." 

He  looked  at  her,  blank  with  amazement.  She 
was  twisting  and  pulling  at  her  fingers,  her  eyes 
fixed  on  him  in  a  painful  dilation,  her  lips  twitching. 
And  abruptly  she  held  out  to  him — a  wedding 
ring. 

She  had  so  much  the  air  and  attitude  of  a  guilty 
child  mutely  confessing  some  little  theft,  that  he 
could  hardly  resist  the  nervous  impulse  to  laugh  at 
her.  "But  here! "  he  said,  between  amusement  and 
pity,  "you've  simply  destroyed  your  marriage  cer 
tificate!  You  needed  it  to  get  your  divorce." 

"I  can't.  I  can't  get  a  divorce.  I'd — I'd  be 
ashamed  to.  And  it  would  ruin  him" 

"Ashamed  to!    What  do  you  mean?" 

"He — he's  a  young  clergyman.  I  made  him 
marry  me  because  he — I  won't  tell  you!  I  won't 
tell  anyone.  They'd  all  guess — if  they  knew  we'd 
been  married.  They — He — "  She  felt  her  way 
stiffly  to  the  table  and  sat  down. 

Life  had  become  suddenly  unromantic  to  him. 
"Phew!"  He  blew  a  long  breath  of  impatient  de 
pression  and  annoyance.  He  swore  to  himself  at 
the  marriage  certificate.  "Don't  your  people  know 
about  this?"  he  asked,  flicking  at  it  angrily. 

[38] 


HENRI  ANTHON 


"No." 

"And  you  won't  get  a  divorce  because  you  don't 
want  them  to  know  that  he — that  your  young 
clergyman — betrayed  you?  Is  that  it?" 

"Yes." 

He  got  up,  and  tossed  the  paper  on  the  table 
beside  her,  and  began  to  pace  up  and  down  the 
room.  "What  do  your  people  suppose  has  hap 
pened  to  you?" 

"Nothing." 

"Nothing?" 

"I  get  letters  from  them  at  the  office." 

"Well,  I'll  be  bio  wed ! "  He  stood  looking  at  her, 
his  hands  deep  in  his  pockets.  "And  you're  pre 
pared  to  marry  me  in  this  way,  rather  than " 

"I  don't  want  to  marry  you.  I  just  wanted  to 
fix  it  so  we  could  say  we  were  married." 

"Oh,  really!"  He  was  sarcastic.  "And  leaving 
my  feelings  entirely  out  of  the  question,  how  about 
your  precious  clergyman?  What  will  he  say  when 
he  hears  it?" 

"Nothing." 

"Nothing!" 

"He's  afraid." 

"Afraid  of  you?" 

"He's  afraid  I'd  tell.  They'd  know  what  had  hap 
pened  if  they  knew  we'd  been  married  that  way. 
Besides,  he's  religious.  He  took  it  as  a — a  sort  of 
penance." 

"Ho  married  you  as  a  penance!" 

I  39  ] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

"No.  I  made  him  marry  me  secretly.  I  threat 
ened  to  tell  what — what  had  happened — if  he 
didn't.  And  then  when  we  came  out  of  the  church 
I  told  him  he  could  go — I'd  never  see  him  again — 
I  hated  him.  And  he  said — I  don't  know — that  it 
was  his  punishment." 

"It  seems  to  me,"  he  said,  considering  her  ex 
pression,  "you're  punishing  yourself  as  much  as 
him." 

"It  would  be  worse  if  I — if  I  tried  to  get  a 
divorce.  The  whole  thing  would  come  out.  It — 
it  would  kill  my  father." 

"Well,"  he  cried,  exasperated,  "how  about  his 
finding  out  that  you're  here  with  me.  Suppose 
some  one  recognized  you  on  the  street?  " 

"That's  why  I  wanted  to  say  we  were  married." 

"Excuse  me \  I'm  going  to  get  out !  I  don't  want 
a  lifetime  of  scenes  like  this."  He  went  to  get  his 
hat. 

"No!"  She  rose  in  a  frenzy  of  which  he  had  not 
thought  her  capable.  She  ran  to  the  door  and  stood 
with  her  back  against  it.  "I  can't,"  she  panted. 
"I  can't  let  you.  I'm — I'm  going  crazy.  I  can't 
think  of  anything  but — I  can't  sleep.  I  don't  want 
anything  except  to  help  you,  to  look  after  you. 
I  want  you.  I  can't  let  you  go.  I  can't  face  it 
again.  It's  too  lonely.  Just  let  me  say  we're  mar 
ried,  so  I  can  tell  people  and  write  home.  Just  let 
me  say  it,  so  I'll  not  be  disgraced.  Please !  Please! 
She  wrung  her  hands.  "Don't  leave  me." 

[40] 


HENRI  ANTHON 


"Oh,  hell!"     He  flung  his  hat  across  the  room. 
"I  don't  care.    Do  what  you  like." 

8 

So  she  became  "Mrs.  Anthon,"  and  the  terms 
and  conditions  of  their  tragedy  were  set. 

To  all  outward  appearances  it  was  a  love  match 
of  the  deepest  devotion — on  her  part,  at  least.  In 
a  crowded  room  with  him,  it  seemed  impossible  for 
her  to  keep  her  eyes  from  him.  And  it  was,  ap 
parently,  that  rarest  of  marriages,  a  union  of  artistic 
minds  in  daily  collaboration,  for  now  they  conceived 
the  idea  of  publishing  their  Bibelot.  (It  was  on  the 
plates  in  the  Bibelot  that  he  first  became  "Henri" 
Anthon.)  She  continued  her  office  work,  and  so 
did  he.  He  developed  a  talent  for  taking  the  bare 
elevation  of  an  architect's  plans  and  producing  a 
sketch  for  a  building  in  a  romantic  color  and 
atmosphere  that  no  client  could  resist.  He  learned 
to  etch  for  the  Bibelot  with  a  skill  that  has  made  him 
famous.  And  her  verses,  if  they  made  no  great 
sensation  at  the  moment,  stand  now  as  "the  only 
American  woman's  work  that  ranks  with  Christina 
Rossetti's." 

The  critics  who  made  the  Anthons  famous  have 
variously  interpreted  their  work  in  terms  of  their 
personalities.  And  the  man  who  wrote  the  article 
on  Anthon  for  International  Art  has  a  consistent 
theory  of  the  artist's  growth  in  terms  of  his  exper- 

[41] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

ience.  It  is  all  stuff.  For  instance,  the  critics  have 
none  of  them  guessed  that  Anthon's  etchings  in  the 
Bibelot  were  not  made  to  illustrate  his  wife's  poems, 
but  the  poems  were  written  to  interpret  the  etch 
ings.  Anthon  was  never  an  illustrator.  And  his 
wife  was  never  a  purely  original  poet.  She  took  her 
dreams  from  him. 

A  great  many  of  her  poems  were  love  poems. 
Since  she  had  no  eyes  for  anyone  but  Anthon,  it  was 
taken  for  granted  that  she  had  written  these  poems 
to  him.  And  since  he  was  all  eyes  for  every  hand 
some  woman  that  he  saw,  it  was  supposed  that  she 
was  so  silent  because  she  was  unhappily  jealous. 
The  secret  behind  the  outward  seeming  of  their 
lives  was  never  suspected — not  even  by  those  of  us 
who  lived  in  the  same  house  with  them.  Not  until 
the  whole  thing  had  come  to  its  tragic  conclusion 
did  Anthon  disclose  the  truth,  in  a  midnight  con 
fession  in  my  rooms — a  confession  that  was  a  pitia 
ble  outburst  of  self -justification  in  which  he  related 
all  the  details  that  I  have  been  trying  to  recon 
struct,  more  or  less  imaginatively,  in  this  memoir  of 
him. 

9 

It  seems  that  her  clergyman  heard  of  her  marriage 
and  came  to  see  her.  He  arrived  while  Anthon  was 
alone  in  the  studio,  and  Anthon  received  him  with 
no  suspicion  of  who  he  was,  and  chatted  sociably 
over  a  plate  that  was  in  its  final  stages. 

[42] 


HENRI  ANTHON 


"He  wasn't  dressed  like  a  preacher,"  Anthon 
said,  "and  he  didn't  look  like  one.  He  looked  more 
like  a  poet.  I  thought  he  was  some  young  Shelley 
that  wanted  to  contribute  to  the  Bibelot.  They 
were  always  hunting  us  up." 

The  moment  that  Mrs.  Anthon  entered,  Anthon 
knew  who  the  man  was.  She  looked  at  him  as  if 
she  saw  a  ghost.  She  did  not  seem  to  see  Anthon 
there  at  all.  The  man  said,  "Grace!"  And  she 
asked,  "What  do  you  want?"  And  Anthon  took  his 
hat  and  fled.  But  the  tone  of  that  "Grace!"  was 
the  tone  of  misery  seeing  the  door  of  salvation.  And 
though  her  "What  do  you  want?"  closed  the  door 
and  stood  guard  in  front  of  it,  Anthon  escaped  with 
the  conviction  that  the  door  would  be  opened. 

He  expected  it  with  relief.  He  was  no  longer  in 
love  with  her — even  in  his  own  way — and  this 
"young  Shelley"  was  obviously  "mad  about  her." 
Anthon  protested  that  he  was  grateful  for  what  she 
had  done  for  him.  He  was  convinced  of  that 
gratitude.  But  it  was  evident  that  gratitude  had 
become  a  burden  to  him.  I  had  long  been  aware 
that  he  resented  his  subordinate  position  as  the 
supposed  illustrator  of  her  poems,  and  we  had  all 
known  that  he  was  more  than  interested  in  a 
smoldering  lady  novelist  of  great  emotional  in 
tensity  who  came  to  their  Thursday  evenings  at 
home. 

He  walked  about  the  streets  for  an  hour.  When 
he  returned  to  the  studio,  Grace  was  alone  there. 
4  [43] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

He  asked  cheerfully,  "Well,  have  you  made  it  up?" 
And,  of  course,  he  asked  it  in  a  manner  that  showed 
how  much  he  hoped  that  she  had  made  it  up. 

She  rose  to  her  feet,  as  if  she  had  been  called  upon 
to  stand  and  take  her  sentence.  "You  expected 
me  to!"  she  said. 

"Well,  for  Heaven's  sake,"  he  cried,  "what  do 
you  want?  The  man's  mad  about  you  and  you're 
his  wife!  You  won't  let  me  be  anything  to  you. 
We  can't  go  on  living  this  way.  It  isn't  human. 
What  do  you  expect?" 

She  had  expected  to  make  her  own  peculiar  terms 
with  life,  and  life  would  not  accept  them.  In  the 
person  of  Henri  Anthon,  it  refused  them  angrily. 
It  cried:  "What  do  you  expect?  What  do  you 
expect?" 

She  got  her  hat  and  pinned  it  on,  looking  at  him 
— or  rather  looking  through  him,  as  if  she  were 
unable  to  focus  her  eyes  on  him,  frowning  at  him, 
wide  eyed,  with  an  uncertain  and  somewhat  drunken 
stare.  He  kept  asking:  "What  do  you  want  to  do? 
What  do  you  want  me  to  do?" 

She  shook  her  head.  She  went  to  the  door,  stiffly 
erect,  but  not  very  sure  of  her  feet,  apparently. 
She  turned  on  the  threshold,  holding  the  door  knob, 
as  if  she  were  going  to  speak  to  him,  but  she  seemed 
to  be  unable  to  find  him  with  her  eyes  and  she  tried 
to  smile  at  the  room  in  general.  She  achieved  only 
a  vague  and  rather  maudlin  distortion  of  the  face. 
It  was  an  expression  that  offended  him.  It  was  not 

[44] 


HENRI  ANTHON 


beautiful.  It  had  that  sordid  air  of  stupid  reality 
which  he  hated  in  life. 

She  went  out.  He  threshed  around  the  room  for 
a  while,  in  a  state  of  nervous  exasperation.  He 
tried  to  pack  up  his  things,  but  he  had  nothing  in 
which  to  pack  them.  Finally  he  hurried  out  to  the 
street  himself,  walked  aimlessly  up  and  down,  had 
his  dinner  in  a  restaurant,  and  returned  to  find  the 
room  still  empty. 

It  was  ten  o'clock  that  night  before  he  learned 
that  she  had  been  killed  by  a  street  car. 

10 

I  do  not  offer  any  of  this  in  criticism  of  Anthon. 
I  feel  that  he  was  perhaps  less  to  blame  than  she. 
I  offer  it  in  explanation  of  his  art  and  his  life. 

It  explains,  for  instance,  why  he  published  no 
more  issues  of  the  Bibelot,  why  he  never  illustrated 
any  poems  after  her  death,  and  refused  all  contracts 
for  such  work,  and  supported  himself  as  an  archi 
tectural  draftsman.  It  explains  why  he  never 
married;  his  relations  with  women  continued  to  be 
merely  jocular  and  predatory.  This  attitude  of 
mind  is  the  secret,  I  think,  of  his  famous  series  of 
dry-point  portraits  of  American  femininity.  His 
"Manhattan  Nights,"  done  at  the  same  period,  are 
another  matter.  They  are  his  subconscious  dreams 
made  visible.  The  critics  who  try  to  reconcile  his  two 
manners  are  merely  unaware  that  he  had  two  minds. 

[45] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

I  lost  sight  of  him  when  he  went  to  Paris;  but 
when  I  say  that  he  went  there  like  a  man  ascending 
bodily  to  Heaven,  I  mean  it  literally.  His  etchings 
of  the  Latin  Quarter,  of  the  Boulevards,  and  of 
Montmartre  are  pictures  of  the  Promised  Land. 
They  have  all  the  charm  and  beauty  of  a  dream  come 
true.  They  are  the  acme  of  his  recognized  achieve 
ment.  And  when  war  and  the  German  invasion 
brought  the  terrible  realities  of  life  trampling  into 
his  earthly  paradise,  it  was  inevitably  the  end  of 
everything  for  him.  There  was  nothing  left  for  him 
but  to  reject  life  on  such  terms — as  there  had  been 
nothing  left  for  Grace  Aspinwall.  It  was  suicide 
^for  a  man  of  his  age  and  physique  to  volunteer  with 
'his  Latin  Quarter  friends,  and  he  must  have  known 
that  it  was  suicide. 

The  recent  monograph  of  him,  in  International 
Art,  showed  as  his  only  monument  the  wooden  cross 
that  marks  his  grave  behind  the  French  lines  at 
Souchez.  Evidently,  he  never  told  his  Paris-  ad 
mirers  about  the  Broadway  Building.  And  that,  I 
think,  is  the  great  criticism  that  life  has  to  make  of 
Anthon's  art.  He  was  ashamed  of  his  one  achieve 
ment  that  life  accepted,  on  its  own  terms,  proudly. 


II.   BIGDANREILLY 

"He  is  a  chip,  a  hand  specimen,  from  the  base 
ment  structure  upon  which  American  politics  rest." 
— H.  G.  Wells,  The  Future  in  America. 


CALL  it  "Headquarters."  That  is  the  way  the 
politicians  always  refer  to  it,  although  it  is  a 
club.  And  imagine  the  politicians  sitting  in  their 
puffy  leather  chairs  around  the  reception  room  of 
the  club  that  night,  looking  out  on  the  street  lights 
of  Fifth  Avenue,  under  oil  portraits  of  their  worthy 
predecessors,  with  brass  cuspidors  at  their  feet  and 
brass  match  safes  at  their  elbows.  And  imagine 
them  raising  a  cloud  of  cigar  smoke  and  a  private 
mutter  of  political  conversation,  and  an  occasional 
quiet  chuckle  or  an  amused  cough  that  represented 
laughter — a  red-faced,  hoarse  cough,  with  one  eye 
brow  up  and  a  fat  hand  over  the  mouth. 

"Some  of  the  best  men  in  New  York  were  there," 
Gatecliff  boasted,  in  his  account  of  what  happened. 
"Some  of  the  best.  Millionaires.  Heads  of  cor 
porations." 

He  named  names  that  it  would  be  almost  blas 
phemous  to  repeat  in  print. 

At  the  far  end  of  the  room,  the  descending  stairs 
made  a  railed  landing  like  a  balcony.  Big  Dan 

[47] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

Reilly  was  in  the  habit  of  coming  down  those  stairs 
to  hold  his  reception  on  the  floor  of  the  room,  nod 
ding  and  shaking  hands  and  talking  here  and  there 
freely,  unless  the  matter  was  so  confidential  that  it 
was  necessary  to  withdraw  to  a  corner  table.  And 
everybody  always  preserved  an  appearance  of  tak 
ing  part  in  some  social  function  that  was  genially 
informal,  perhaps  because  Dan  Reilly's  power  was 
outside  the  law  and  any  consultation  with  him  might 
well  make  itself  look  as  innocent  as  possible. 

This  night  he  appeared,  as  expected,  on  the  stairs; 
and  they  all  rose  as  usual  to  greet  him,  still  chatting, 
as  if  their  risiifg  were  automatic  and  absent-minded, 
although  it  was  neither.  He  descended  as  far  as  the 
landing  and  stood  with  his  hands  in  his  pockets, 
looking  down  sullenly  at  the  men  who  turned  to  him 
in  surprise  as  he  waited. 

He  was  dressed  in  black.  Ordinarily  he  wore 
clothes  that  had  an  air  of  the  race  track  and  the 
betting  ring.  His  big,  good-natured,  florid,  round 
face  looked  heavy,  sulky,  lowering.  He  said,  "I'll 
see  you"  and  pointed  insolently  to  a  man  below  him. 

Silence.    Amazed  silence. 

He  looked  from  face  to  face.    "And  I'll  see  you" 

This  man  flushed,  examined  his  cigar,  put  it 
between  his  biting  teeth,  and  smoked  with  narrowed 
eyes,  thoughtfully. 

"And  you." 

A  nervous  clearing  of  some  embarrassed  throat. 

"And  you." 

[48] 


BIG  DAN  REILLY 


He  picked  out  a  half  dozen.  "The  rest  o'  you," 
he  said,  "can  go  home." 

And  they  went  home. 

"We  went  home!"  Gatecliff  cried.  "We  went 
home!  But" — and  he  marked  his  point  with  a  spite 
ful  forefinger — "it  ended  Big  Dan  as  the  boss  of 
the  organization.  He  never  got  a  chance  to  speak 
that  way  to  a  group  of  gentlemen  again." 


From  one  point  of  view,  the  scene  ought  to  be 
historic.  It  ought  to  be  painted  by  the  artist  who 
did  that  museum  picture  of  the  French  king's  con 
fessor,  a  barefooted  monk,  descending  the  grand 
staircase  of  the  palace  while  all  the  silken  courtiers 
bowed  and  smirked  before  him.  (Dan  Reilly,  of 
the  Bowery  and  the  underworld,  saying  contemp 
tuously  to  the  nobility  and  ruling  class  of  New  York, 
"The  rest  o'  you  can  go  home!") 

From  another  point  of  view,  it  is  almost  as  scandal 
ous  as  anything  you  will  find  in  the  secret  memoirs 
of  the  French  king's  court.  Gatecliff  was  there  as 
the  confidential  adviser  of  a  "traction  magnate" 
who  wished  to  procure  for  his  company  a  monopoly 
right  in  certain  city  streets  in  order  to  operate  a 
public  utility;  and  the  magnate  was  discreetly 
offering  Big  Dan  and  the  other  leaders  of  the  organi 
zation  some  million  dollars'  worth  of  stock  in  the 
company,  in  return  for  the  franchise.  (It  is  impos- 

[49] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

sible  to  be  more  explicit  without  incurring  a  libel 
suit.)  Moreover,  all  the  other  millionaires  were 
there  for  similar  reasons.  Big  Dan  controlled  the 
votes  that  made  it  necessary  for  the  "best  men" 
in  New  York  to  do  business  with  him.  It  was  illegal, 
corrupt,  poisonous — but  there  it  was.  They  had  to 
do  it,  or  somebody  else  would.  They  put  a  good 
face  on  it — a  polite,  conventional  face — and  Big 
Dan  had  hitherto  looked  at  that  face  grimly,  but 
with  every  appearance  of  being  deceived  by  it. 
Now,  incredibly,  he  had  reached  out  his  great, 
brutal  hand  and  smacked  it. 
Why? 


The  answer  is  simple.  It  merely  involves  an  ex 
planation  of  Big  Dan's  character  and  his  point  of 
view,  the  story  of  his  life,  a  picture  of  the  moral 
and  political  background  of  his  career,  and  an 
account  of  his  relations  with  his  mother,  with  Gate- 
cliff,  and  with  Gatecliff's  sister  Mary. 

A  man  suddenly  says  a  decisive  word  and  makes 
a  final  gesture.  Behind  his  impulse  to  say  that  word 
and  make  that  gesture  there  is  a  lifetime  of  growth, 
experience,  emotion.  All  his  past — all  that  he  has 
known  and  thought  and  seen  and  suffered  up  to 
that  moment — all  has  a  part  in  the  motive  of  his 
action.  And  all  his  future  comes  influenced  out 
of  it. 

Dan  Reilly's  moment  on  the  balcony  was  such 

[50] 


BIG  DAN  REILLY 


a  moment.  It  is  not  impossible  to  find  its  vague 
beginnings  in  events  that  occurred  even  before  his 
birth.  For  example: 

Some  weeks  before  he  was  born  his  father  was 
killed  in  the  "infamous  draft  riots"  of  the  summer 
of  1863.  His  father  was  the  Hugh  Reilly,  the  "Red" 
Reilly,  who  led  the  riots  in  his  district  because  of 
the  clause  in  the  Conscription  Act  by  which  a  man 
could  buy  exemption  for  three  hundred  dollars. 
Red  Reilly  could  not  understand  why  only  the  poor 
in  pocket  should  be  forced  to  die  for  their  country. 
He  died  learning  it.  He  was  in  arrears  with  his  rent 
at  the  time — as  he  was  at  all  times — and  the  land 
lord  evicted  the  widow  of  the  traitor,  in  a  burst  of 
patriotism,  as  soon  as  he  heard  what  had  happened 
to  Reilly. 

Red  Reilly's  unborn  son  heard  it  later.  He 
heard  it  as  the  story  of  his  father's  revolt  against 
those  governing  classes  who  had  passed  a  draft  law 
providing  for  their  own  exemption.  And  I  believe 
it  is  not  too  far  fetched  to  see  him  as  Red  Reilly's 
son  unconsciously  carrying  on  his  father's  quarrel, 
when  he  stood  on  the  stairs  at  Headquarters  and 
said  to  later  beneficiaries  of  legislative  privilege, 
"The  rest  o'  you  can  go  home."  \  % 

And  whether  that  is  far  fetched  or  not,  this  much 
is  certain:  the  circumstances  of  his  birth  strongly 
determined  the  psychology  of  his  great  dramatic 
moment. 

With  his  mother  evicted  as  the  widow  of  a  de- 

[51] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

linquent  traitor,  he  might  have  been  born  in  the 
gutter  if  she  had  not  been  given  shelter  by  a  woman 
more  unfortunate  even  than  she.  Consequently, 
he  was  born  "amid  the  most  depraved  surround 
ings" — in  a  tenement  that  stood  in  the  back  yard 
of  a  Grove  Street  house  that  was  itself  sufficiently 
depraved,  although  it  kept  up  an  appearance  of 
red-brick  respectability  with  a  rare  old  Colonial 
door  and  a  notable  fanlight. 

The  shack  behind  it  was  a  clapboarded  wooden 
building  that  had  been  a  wagon  factory,  and  then 
a  livery  stable,  before  it  became  unfit  for  the  use  of 
valuable  animals.  It  was  occupied  by  a  number  of 
unpitied  outcasts  who  lived  there,  practically  rent 
free,  by  the  grace  of  the  woman  who  kept  the  Grove 
Street  house.  There  were  no  chimneys  in  the  build 
ing.  Stovepipes  protruded  through  some  of  the 
broken  window  panes;  but  there  was  no  stove  in 
the  room  in  which  the  future  ruler  of  New  York 
was  born;  its  regular  occupant  kept  herself  warm 
with  alcohol.  It  was  a  room  that  had  been  part 
of  the  paint  shop  of  the  wagon  factory,  and  in  one 
corner  the  drip  of  innumerable  cart  wheels  had 
deposited  a  ridge,  a  hummock,  a  rounded  stalag 
mite,  of  hardened  paint.  The  head  of  Mrs.  Reilly's 
mattress  took  advantage  of  that  mound  to  make 
a  pillow. 

Dan  was  born  on  a  cool  August  evening,  after  a 
day's  rain,  by  the  light  of  a  blessed  candle  that  had 
been  borrowed  from  a  neighbor.  He  was  a  twelve- 

[52] 


BIG  DAN  REILLY 


pound  baby,  as  lusty  as  a  young  porker,  and  his 
arrival  was  as  much  an  event  as  if  he  had  been  born 
in  a  convent.  The  thwarted  maternal  instincts 
of  his  neighbors  received  him  with  gratified  excite 
ment.  They  carried  him  up  and  down  stairs 
wrapped  in  an  old  wnite-silk  petticoat,  exhibiting 
him  from  room  to  room.  As  a  man-child,  he  had 
the  rank  of  a  young  heir  among  his  slaves. 

"There  y*  are!"  as  one  of  them  said,  admiringly. 
"Many's  the  gurl  '11  break  her  heart  fer  you,  yuh 
little  Turk!" 

The  occupants  of  the  Grove  Street  house  lavished 
gifts  on  him  and  invalid  comforts  on  his  mother. 
For  two  months  they  cared  for  her  while  she  was  too 
ill  to  help  herself.  They  brought  her  sewing  to  do 
when  she  grew  strong  enough  to  resent  charity. 
She  said  good-by  to  them  regretfully  when  she  was 
well  enough  to  move  to  more  comfortable  surround 
ings.  And  she  parted  from  them  with  a  gratitude 
that  she  never  forgot  or  allowed  her  son  to  forget. 

Once  when  the  police  were  making  a  vice  crusade 
ostentatiously,  she  told  him  the  story  of  his  birth 
and  said,  "Danny,  if  y'  iver  do  anything  to  make 
life  harder  fer  the  likes  o'  thim,  yeh're  no  son  o' 


mine." 


He  did  a  great  deal  to  make  life  harder  for  the 
likes  of  them,  as  any  ruler  makes  life  harder  for  his 
subjects;  there  were  hundreds  of  them  in  his  home 
district,  and  they  had  to  pay  his  henchmen  for  the 
protection  they  received.  But  he  protected  them 

[53] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

from  other  exploitation  and  from  the  sort  of  hard 
ship  and  persecution  that  his  mother  besought  him 
to  spare  them.  "The  king  of  the  underworld,"  "his 
saloons  their  known  resorts,"  he  accepted  them  on 
their  own  terms  as  part  of  his  constituency.  He 
represented  them  in  politics  as  well  as  he  represented 
anybody.  And  he  was  still  representing  them  when 
he  stood  on  the  balcony  at  Headquarters  and  looked 
down  on  those  men  who,  he  knew,  despised  him 
secretly  as  much  as  they  despised  his  constituents. 


Most  determinative  of  all,  he  stood  there  as  his 
mother's  son. 

When  she  left  the  Grove  Street  tenement  she 
carried  him  to  a  room  in  Hudson  Street,  and  settled 
down  to  do  scrubbing  and  washing  and  sewing  to 
support  him.  She  was  a  frail  young  woman,  from  the 
north  of  Ireland,  thrifty  and  ambitious.  She  had 
married  Red  Reilly  against  everyone's  advice  but 
his,  and  she  had  emigrated  to  America  with  him  to 
escape  the  commiseration  of  the  prejudiced.  She 
was  without  relatives  in  New  York,  and  almost 
without  friends.  Alone,  in  silence,  like  a  prisoner 
digging  a  tunnel  secretly,  she  set  to  work  to  escape 
from  poverty. 

And  she  failed  because  of  a  characteristic  which, 
in  Big  Dan  Reilly,  made  his  political  fortune.  She 
was  insanely  charitable.  Anyone  who  asked  her 

[54] 


BIG  DAN  REILLY 


for  help  could  have  it  from  her.  She  would  give 
away  her  money,  her  food,  her  clothes,  her  bedding. 
It  was  as  if,  having  suffered  the  extreme  of  ship 
wreck  and  been  rescued  by  the  charity  of  the  most 
needy,  she  was  unable  thereafter  to  refuse  anyone 
a  share  in  whatever  little  she  had.  She  was  never 
able  to  get  ahead.  There  was  never  anything  for 
to-morrow  in  her  purse  or  her  larder.  And  it  was 
this  quality  in  Big  Dan  that  afterward  made  it 
possible  for  him  to  hold  his  followers  together  by 
what  the  newspapers  called  "the  cohesive  power  of 
public  plunder."  More  of  that  later. 

By  the  time  he  was  six  years  old  he  was  selling 
newspapers  and  blacking  shoes,  in  order  to  help  her. 
But  only  after  school  hours.  She  made  him  go  to 
school  faithfully.  And  even  as  a  shoeblack  he  showed 
some  organizing  ability,  for  he  got  the  monopoly 
right  to  shine  the  shoes  of  the  policemen  in  the 
station  house  of  his  precinct,  and  he  did  the  work 
so  well  that  he  obtained  the  same  work  in  another 
precinct  and  took  an  assistant.  He  sold  newspapers 
in  City  Hall  Park  long  enough  to  make  friends  in  a 
press  room,  where  he  took  the  job  of  helping  to 
carry  papers  from  the  presses  to  the  delivery  carts, 
at  a  salary  of  a  dollar  and  a  half  a  week. 

"When  I  got  to  be  ten  years  old,"  he  said  once,  in 
a  speech  on  the  Bowery,  "I  got  a  teacher  in  school 
to  let  me  go  at  two  o'clock,  an'  then  I  was  able  to 
serve  that  newspaper  all  to  myself.  I  passed  the 
grammer  department  o'  my  school,  an'  I  was  one 

[55] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

o'  seven  boys  to  go  to  the  Free  Academy,  in  Twenty- 
third  Street,  I  think  it  was.  Free  as  it  was,  it  wasn't 
free  enough  for  me  to  go  there.  I  had  to  go  an* 
commence  the  struggle  o'  life." 

And  there  again,  I  think,  spoke  the  son  of  Red 
Reilly,  in  revolt  against  the  class  that  could  afford 
leisure  for  education,  and  acutely  conscious  of  the 
fact  that  their  organs  of  publicity  spoke  of  him  as 
having  "the  manners  and  speech  of  the  typical 
'tough.'" 

However,  to  get  down  to  Gatecliff  and  his  sister 
and  the  immediate  personal  motives  behind  that 
scene  at  Headquarters — 


Big  Dan,  as  a  boy,  was  so  large  for  his  age  that  he 
arrived  at  long  pants  a  year  earlier  than  the  others 
of  his  generation;  and  this  made  him  inevitably 
notable  among  his  contemporaries.  He  was  handy 
with  his  fists,  as  they  all  were,  and  his  size  gave  him 
a  natural  superiority  in  street  fighting,  which  was 
their  chief  recreation.  He  was  kindly  and  good- 
natured,  so  that  he  did  not  tyrannize  over  his  com 
panions,  but  fought  the  older  bullies  who  would 
have  tyrannized  over  them.  It  was  so  that  he  first 
championed  young  Buttony  Gatecliff  against  op 
pression,  and  won  the  devotion  of  Buttony's  sister. 

They  called  him  "Buttony"  because  he  wore  his 
knickerbockers  buttoned  to  his  roundabout.  He 

[56] 


BIG  DAN  REILLY 


was  the  timid  son  of  a  conciliatory  grocer,  Amos 
Gatecliff,  who  kept  a  shop  on  Hudson  street,  and 
he  was  persecuted  by  all  the  little  bruisers  of  the 
neighborhood,  who  had  learned  that  they  could 
blackmail  him  for  sweets  from  his  father's  shelves 
by  waylaying  him  on  the  streets  and  torturing  him 
with  threats  of  violence  unless  he  brought  them 
tribute.  His  life  had  become  a  continual  terror. 
He  had  either  to  steal  at  home  or  be  hunted  like 
defenseless  virtue  abroad.  His  only  protector  was  his 
sister  Mary,  who  escorted  him  whenever  she  could. 

She  was  escorting  him  home  from  school  one 
winter  afternoon  when  he  was  set  upon  by  three  of 
his  tormentors.  One  held  her,  and  the  others  took 
Buttony  and  rubbed  his  face  in  the  snow  and 
crammed  it  down  his  collar  and  filled  his  mittens 
with  it  and  stifled  his  outcries  while  they  exacted 
promises  of  future  bribes.  Fate  brought  Danny 
Reilly  on  the  scene.  Mary  Gatecliff  knew  him  by 
sight;  she  had  seen  him  in  her  father's  shop  buying 
an  occasional  twist  of  "orange  pekoe"  as  a  present 
for  his  mother.  She  cried  out  to  him. 

In  an  instant  he  was  sprawling  on  the  pavement, 
with  the  largest  bully  under  him  and  the  other  two 
on  his  back.  She  caught  Buttony  to  her  and  pre 
vented  him  from  running  away  while  she  stood,  loyal 
but  terrified  into  helplessness,  watching  Big  Dan  do 
battle  for  her.  That  battle  was  a  primitive  affair, 
bloody  and  furious.  It  was  not  fought  according  to 
any  Queensberry  rules.  Dan  terrified  one  opponent 

[57] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

into  flight  by  trying  to  bite  the  nose  off  him.  He 
kicked  another  in  the  kneecap  and  all  but  broke  his 
leg.  The  third  did  not  wait  his  turn.  He  popped 
into  a  basement  like  a  rat  into  its  hole,  and  escaped 
by  some  back  exit. 

Dan  picked  up  his  cap,  grinning,  brushed  the 
snow  off  himself,  and  asked  her,  "Which  way  're 
yuh  goin'?" 

As  they  went  she  confided  all  Buttony's  troubles 
to  him,  and  he  listened  with  a  touch  of  that  social 
superiority  which  he  had  always  felt  for  the  Gate- 
cliffs.  They  were  shopkeepers.  They  were  in 
gratiatingly  polite  to  customers.  They  were 
English,  and  they  had  English  traditions  of  class 
subservience  which  no  young  Irishman  of  Dan's 
temperament  could  understand.  He  walked  beside 
her  like  a  s worded  D'Artagnan  beside  the  wife  of 
Bonacieux,  the  mercer  of  The  Three  Musketeers. 

He  said  to  her  at  parting,  "If  any  o'  them  kids 
ever  picks  on  Buttony  again,  you  come  an'  tell  me" 

She  was  a  pale  and  intense  little  hero  worshiper 
with  black  hair  and  large  dark  eyes.  She  raised 
those  eyes  to  him  in  a  most  submissive  admiration. 
"Thanks,"  she  murmured,  from  her  heart. 

Thereafter  Buttony  was  safe  under  Dan's  pro 
tection  and  the  protection  of  his  gang.  The  word 
was  passed  around  that  Mary  was  Dan's  "girl" 
and  that  any  boy  who  gave  Buttony  any  cause  to 
complain  of  him  might  as  well  prepare  to  meet  his 
day  of  judgment. 

[58] 


BIG  DAN  REILLY 


The  gang  was  merely  a  group  of  a  dozen  boys  who 
played  and  fought  together  as  boys  of  a  neighbor 
hood  always  do.  They  called  themselves  the  Hylos, 
for  no  reason  that  anyone  remembers.  Dan  had 
found  a  clubroom  for  them  in  a  vacant  coal  cellar; 
he  had  found  it  by  merely  breaking  in  a  cellar  door. 
They  held  nightly  meetings  there,  by  candlelight, 
with  the  cellar  windows  covered,  playing  cards, 
shooting  craps,  and  feasting  on  apples,  bread, 
bologna,  pails  of  jam,  bottles  of  catsup,  tins  of 
salmon  or  whatever  else  they  had  been  able  to 
gather  during  the  evening.  And  they  gathered  these 
things  as  boys  rob  orchards,  in  an  adventurous 
spirit  of  young  deviltry. 

One  of  them  was  a  butcher's  son,  and  it  was  his 
duty  to  steal  his  father's  sausage.  He  afterward 
became  the  president  of  a  packing  company  and  he 
always  spoke  of  Big  Dan  with  real  affection.  An 
other  was  the  son  of  a  baker,  and  he  filched  rolls  and 
cakes.  The  rest  went  in  twos  and  threes  to  make 
organized  raids  on  push-cart  peddlers  and  the  goods 
displayed  in  front  of  food  shops.  Big  Dan  laid  out 
the  tactics  of  their  raids  and  attended  to  the  police. 
He  would  walk  up  to  the  officer  on  the  beat  and  en 
gage  him  in  conversation.  "Purty  good  shine,  eh?  " 
he  might  say,  pointing  to  his  patron's  shoes,  boyish 
and  innocent,  with  no  sign  of  shrewdness  in  his  big 
smile.  And  while  the  officer  was  being  "jollied" 
the  other  Hylos  would  grab  their  loot  and  run. 
Their  organized  mischief  annoyed  the  precinct  for  a 
5  [59] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

whole  winter  before  the  police  discovered  that  their 
station  shoeblack  was  the  leader  of  the  gang — even 
though  he  once  saved  his  confederates  by  acciden 
tally  tripping  up  an  officer  when  the  pursuit  broke 
out  prematurely. 

They  would  occasionally  "roll  a  rummy";  that  is 
to  say,  if  they  met  a  drunken  man  in  a  quiet  spot 
they  would  relieve  him  of  any  money  that  he  had, 
on  the  pragmatic  theory  that  they  might  as  well 
have  it  as  the  first  crook  he  met.  One  or  two  of 
them  snatched  purses,  although  this  was  forbidden 
by  their  leader  except  in  cases  where  it  was  evident 
that  the  owner  of  the  purse  could  well  afford  to  lose 
it.  They  took  part  in  election  campaigns,  pestering 
the  cart-tail  orators  of  the  opposing  party,  pelting 
the  illuminated  wagons  that  carried  "transpar 
encies"  though  the  streets,  marching  uninvited  in 
torchlight  processions,  and  raiding  the  bonfires  on 
election  nights  to  obtain  fuel  for  their  own  rejoicings. 
In  all  these  undertakings  they  acted  like  a  "gang  of 
young  ruffians."  But  they  had  no  idea  that  they 
were  a  gang  of  young  ruffians.  They  thought  they 
were  merely  a  mutual  amusement  club  for  social 
recreation  and  innocent  adventure. 

They  had  no  more  idea  that  their  street  activities 
were  criminal  than  they  had  that  their  pranks  in  the 
parish  church  were  impious.  Several  of  them, 
including  Big  Dan,  were  altar  boys  and  acolytes. 
They  relieved  the  tedium  of  religious  services  by 
carrying  their  candles  so  as  to  drip  hot  grease  on  the 

[60] 


BIG  DAN  REILLY 


heads  of  the  boys  in  front  of  them,  by  putting  bent 
pins  on  sanctuary  benches  and  tying  knots  in  the 
the  arms  of  soutanes.  They  did  these  things  while 
carefully  maintaining  the  devout  expressions  of 
young  cherubs  in  a  heavenly  choir,  and  their  victims 
kept  the  same  pious  faces  while  they  retaliated  and 
defended  themselves.  No  boy  thought  of  appealing 
to  the  priests  for  protection  any  more  than  he  would 
have  thought  of  running  to  the  police  for  aid  in  a 
street  fight;  it  was  against  the  code  and  social  usage. 
And  if  the  priests  knew  what  was  going  on  behind 
their  backs,  they  ignored  it — as  the  police  usually 
did. 

Buttony  came  into  the  Hylos  under  Dan's  wing, 
and  he  was  endured  there  for  Dan's  sake,  but  with 
no  enthusiasm.  The  others  did  not  like  him.  Smok 
ing  made  him  sick.  He  had  no  natural  gift  for  pro 
fanity  and  he  was  unpleasantly  ingratiating  and  self- 
conscious  in  its  use.  He  was  not  of  their  religion, 
which  made  him  an  outlander.  He  stole  with  a 
tremblingly  defiant  air,  as  if  he  expected  to  be  struck 
by  lightning.  And,  of  course,  it  was  he  who  was 
caught. 

He  was  arrested  one  night  for  trying  to  snatch 
a  purse  in  emulation  of  a  more  expert  associate. 
He  was  taken  to  the  station  house  and  locked  up. 
As  soon  as  Big  Dan  heard  of  it  he  went  to  the  station 
on  the  general  pretext  of  his  interest  in  police  boots, 
and  he  was  caught  trying  to  pick  the  lock  of 
Buttony 's  cell,  He  was  locked  up,  himself.  But- 

[61] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

tony,  despairing  of  rescue,  confessed  the  secrets  of 
the  Hylo  gang  to  the  police  captain.  Plain  clothes 
men  gathered  in  the  other  boys.  By  midnight  all 
the  Hylos  were  behind  bars,  and  the  station  house 
was  besieged  by  their  parents,  their  relatives,  and 
their  friends,  all  of  whom  were  eloquent  with  the 
conviction  of  their  own  respectability  and  the 
prisoners'  innocence. 

The  captain  of  the  precinct  at  the  time  was  that 
Joe  Mehlin  who  afterward  became  Superintendent 
of  Police  and  a  power  in  opposition  to  Big  Dan — a 
pompadoured,  red-haired  disciplinarian  with  light- 
blue  eyes  that  looked  peculiarly  cold  in  the  setting 
of  his  sandy  complexion.  He  was  resolved  to  be 
revenged  on  the  Hylos  for  the  trouble  they  had 
given  him.  He  was  especially  set  on  punishing  Big 
Dan  because  he  had  found  it  impossible  to  break 
the  boy  down,  to  make  him  penitent,  to  make  him 
cower. 

"You  got  us  all  wrong,  Cap,"  Dan  kept  saying, 
cheerfully  unawed.  "We  ain't  crooks — none  of 
us.  It's  a  frame-up  on  the  kid.  He's  no  dip.  An' 
he's  so  scared  he  don't  know  what  he's  talkin'  about. 
He'd  say  anythin'." 

And  the  captain  would  reply:  "All  right,  Reilly. 
Then  I'll  send  you  all  up.  You  can't  make  a  fool  o' 
me.  You'll  get  five  years  fer  this." 

The  other  boys  took  their  tone  from  Dan.  His 
attempt  to  rescue  Buttony  had  been  the  final  act  of 
daring  that  had  made  a  melodramatic  hero  of  him. 

[62] 


BIG  DAN  REILLY 


They  stood  behind  him  solidly.  It  was  all  or  none. 
And  by  morning  the  accumulated  political  influence 
of  the  whole  neighborhood,  its  Assemblyman,  its 
priests,  and  its  Senator  was  settling  down  in  a 
menacing  pressure  on  the  police  captain. 

He  stood  out  so  long  that  his  final  collapse  was 
all  the  more  humiliating  to  him,  and  he  consoled 
himself  by  giving  Big  Dan  a  brutal  measure  of  the 
third  degree  before  he  released  the  boy. 

"Listen  here,  Cap,"  Reilly  said,  when  he  had 
reached  the  safety  of  the  station-house  door,  "I'll 
get  yuh  fer  this  some  day,  an'  I'll  get  yuh  good." 

Of  course,  he  kept  his  promise.  Among  the  peo 
ple  whom  he  represents  it  is  a  point  of  honor  to 
avenge  an  injury  as  faithfully  as  to  reward  a  friend. 
It  is  the  whole  duty  of  a  moral  life  to  be  "no  quitter" 
and  "no  ingrate." 

And  poor  Buttony  was  forever  damned  in  the 
eyes  of  the  district  by  being  both  a  quitter  and  an 
ingrate.  He  had  confessed,  and  he  had  betrayed 
his  friends.  He  tried  to  regain  his  standing  in  the 
world  by  recanting  his  confession  everywhere.  He 
told  his  parents  that  it  was  false,  that  he  had  been 
frightened  into  it.  And  Dan  assisted  him,  at  home, 
by  assuring  Mary  Gatecliff  that  they  were  all 
innocent,  particularly  Buttony.  She  believed  him; 
she  accepted  his  attempt  to  rescue  her  brother  as  a 
deed  of  romantic  faithfulness  that  had  been  done 
for  her  as  much  as  for  Buttony;  and  she  rewarded 
Dan  by  letting  him  kiss  her. 

[63] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

Her  parents  were  less  easily  convinced.  They 
saved  Buttony  from  immediate  purgatory  at  the 
hands  of  the  Hylos  by  moving  uptown  to  take  him 
away  from  evil  associates.  Big  Dan,  after  a  touch 
ing  farewell  to  Mary,  remained  to  enjoy  his  laurels. 

To  tell  the  truth,  he  was  relieved  to  have  her  go. 
She  was  older  than  he,  and  he  had  begun  to  find  her 
too  intense  and  humorless  in  her  fixed  idea  of  his 
devotion  to  her.  He  had  not  the  temperament 
needed  to  make  a  humble  cavalier.  He  forgot 
her,  for  the  time. 

Buttony  had  learned  that  you  cannot  break  the 
law  without  risking  punishment.  Big  Dan  had 
learned  that  you  can  escape  punishment  if  you  have 
influence  enough  to  control  the  police.  Buttony 
went  to  the  Free  Academy  to  be  educated  in  the 
ethics  of  respectability ;  he  studied  law  at  Columbia; 
he  became  an  agent  of  the  Citizens'  League;  and  he 
turned  against  his  memories  of  his  boyhood  esca 
pades  with  all  the  fervor  of  a  convert  repenting  of 
his  sins.  Big  Dan  continued  to  take  his  education 
from  the  streets. 

6 

And  here  we  approach  the  real  heart  of  his  mys 
tery.  When  the  Hylos  were  forced  to  dissolve,  by 
the  continued  intrusion  of  the  police,  Dan  and  his 
older  followers  were  absorbed  by  the  James  Phelan 
Athletic  Association — which  was  athletic  in  the  way 
that  the  Y.M.C.A.  is  athletic,  and  political  as  the 

[64] 


BIG  DAN  REILLY 


Y.M.C.A.  is  religious.  Its  two  glories  were  Jimmy 
Phelan,  the  district  leader,  and  Kid  McCann,  the 
champion  lightweight.  Its  membership  included 
the  politicians,  the  ward  heelers,  the  pugilists,  the 
gamblers,  the  professional  crooks,  the  young  sports, 
the  political  aspirants,  and  all  the  doubtful  light 
and  leading  of  the  district.  In  its  rooms  and  on  the 
streets,  after  working  hours,  Big  Dan  became 
familiar  with  every  form  of  common  vice.  Yet  he 
practiced  none  of  them.  Why? 

He  had  promised  his  mother  that  he  would  not 
use  either  tobacco  or  alcohol  until  he  was  twenty- 
one,  but  why  did  he  keep  the  promise?  He  had 
directed  the  Hylos  in  all  their  boyish  raids  and 
depredations,  but  why  did  he  never  join  in  their 
petty  thieving?  The  young  bloods  of  the  Phelan 
Association  put  him  in  the  way  of  becoming  a  prize 
fighter  and  trained  him  for  the  ring.  Why  did  he 
never  take  to  that  ambition?  Why  did  he  continue 
working  in  the  press  room  on  Park  Row  until  he 
was  elected  Assemblyman  from  his  district?  What 
was  the  secret  of  his  strength  of  will  that  carried  him 
to  one  ambition  and  not  to  another,  that  kept  him 
above  weaknesses  which  he  never  seemed  to  con 
demn,  that  made  him  the  king  of  the  underworld — 
as  it  had  made  him  the  leader  of  the  Hylos — but 
preserved  him  from  being,  in  the  professional  sense 
of  the  word,  a  "crook"? 

Well,  Big  Dan,  even  as  a  child,  had  a  bodily 
superiority  that  made  him  admired  and  compli- 

[65] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

mented,  and  I  believe  it  was  this  first  sense  of 
physical  importance  that  formed  the  backbone  of 
his  personality.  His  early  leadership  among  his 
companions  must  have  confirmed  his  innate  con 
viction  of  natural  eminence.  Certainly  he  developed 
a  sort  of  instinct  of  aristocracy  that  showed  in  his 
mother,  too,  in  her  inordinate  almsgiving.  As  the 
head  of  the  Hylos,  he  refrained  from  the  thieving  as 
the  foreman  of  a  work  gang  refrains  from  work. 
When  Buttony  was  arrested  and  Dan  went  to  re 
lease  him,  it  was  from  an  obvious  impulse  of  noblesse 
oblige.  His  promise  that  he  would  not  smoke  or 
drink  he  kept,  as  a  boy,  because  he  was  fond  of  his 
mother;  and  he  kept  it,  as  he  grew  older,  because 
his  habits  of  abstinence  were  habits  of  which  he 
became  proud,  since  they  were  his  habits,  and  dif 
ferent  from  the  prevailing  habits  around  him. 
Moreover,  in  his  experience  of  life,  drunkenness 
was  a  form  of  weakness  of  which  the  predatory  took 
advantage — as  the  Hylos  rolled  a  rummy — and  all 
those  in  his  circle  who  pandered  to  vice  exploited 
similar  weaknesses.  Big  Dan  had  no  intention  of 
allowing  himself  to  be  exploited,  and  some  obscure 
sense  of  responsibility  for  the  weak  prevented  him 
from  becoming  an  exploiter  of  them.  He  accepted 
training  as  a  pugilist  until  he  was  expert  enough 
to  make  anyone  respect  his  blows,  but  he  went  no 
farther;  he  balked  at  being  the  fighting  cock  of  a 
group  of  prize-ring  promoters.  He  became  one  of 
the  stalwarts  who  did  the  "strong-arm"  work  about 

[66] 


BIG  DAN  REILLY 


the  polls,  prevented  members  of  the  opposing  party 
from  casting  their  votes,  and  supplied  the  conse 
quent  vacancy  with  a  loyal  impersonator  when  a 
rival  voter  had  been  carried  home.  Among  his 
people,  this  sort  of  activity  is  regarded  as  good 
exercise  for  a  growing  lad,  and  Big  Dan  took  plenty 
of  it.  But  he  did  not  himself  impersonate;  he  was 
too  conspicuous,  physically.  When  he  became  ward 
captain  he  did  not,  himself,  buy  votes;  he  received 
the  money  and  disbursed  it  to  his  craftier  lieuten 
ants.  And  his  sense  of  superiority  and  of  responsi 
bility  slowly  promoted  him  to  a  leadership  and  an 
authority  which  his  amiable  good  nature  kept 
beneficent  and  popular. 

His  mother  aided  him  throughout.  Her  pride  in 
him  was  colossal;  she  may  have  helped  to  lay  the 
foundations  of  his  nature  with  that  pride.  She 
trusted  him  and  leaned  on  him  even  in  his  school 
days;  and  it  may  have  been  this  that  made  him 
responsible.  She  was  a  wise  judge  of  character; 
she  knew  the  affairs  of  the  whole  neighborhood; 
and  her  gossip  was  an  education  to  him.  When  she 
gave  anything  out  of  her  charity,  she  always  said, 
"This  is  from  Danny,  now,"  and  Danny  got  the 
credit  of  it.  When  he  became  captain  of  his  ward, 
she  acted  as  his  chief  of  staff  and  busied  herself  all 
day  "lookin'  to  his  finces,"  as  she  called  it,  while 
he  was  away  at  his  work.  She  reported  to  him  at 
supper,  while  he  ate  her  cooking,  and  he  would  say, 
grinning:  "If  you  ain't  the  crafty  one!  Would  yuh 

[67] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

like  to  run  fer  the  Presidency?  Tip  me  the  wink 
an'  I'll  speak  to  Phelan." 

"You  an'  yer  Phelan,"  she  would  reply.  "I  cVd 
get  it  from  him  quicker  than  yeh  c'u'd,  yerself." 

"That's  true  enough,  y'  ol'  ward  heeler,"  he  would 
admit.  And  it  was. 

Their  intercourse  was  conducted  in  this  disre 
spectful  tone  of  rough  banter  that  served  to  dis 
guise  the  shamefacedness  of  an  idolatrous  love. 

She  had  been  prematurely  gray  as  a  young 
woman.  Now  she  was  white  haired.  Dan  called 
her  "Granny"  to  tease  her,  and  she  had  become 
"Granny"  affectionately  to  the  whole  ward.  They 
came  to  her  for  every  sort  of  advice  and  assistance. 
They  came  to  her  with  then*  quarrels,  and  she  lis 
tened  to  both  sides  and  sympathized  with  both,  but 
joined  neither.  It  was  her  private  boast  that  she  had 
never  had  a  quarrel  in  her  life.  She  had  an  in 
exhaustible  tolerance,  and  I  do  not  believe  she  ever 
passed  an  adverse  moral  judgment  on  anybody  who 
was  not  rich.  "Poor  people  has  to  make  a  livin'," 
she  would  say,  in  forgiveness  of  all  her  neighbors' 
notorious  delinquencies;  and  yet  she  was  a  devout 
churchgoer  and  prayed  for  Danny  morning,  noon, 
and  night. 

She  was  popular  with  the  mothers,  who  are  the 
real  heads  of  the  families  in  the  tenements.  The 
men  are  too  often  stupefied  by  hard  labor  and 
alcoholic  recreation.  They  are  less  ambitious  than 
their  wives;  they  have  a  weaker  sense  of  responsi- 

[68] 


BIG  DAN  REILLY 


bility  to  their  children;  they  do  not  endure  poverty 
so  hardily;  they  die  younger.  "Granny"  Reilly 
was  the  confidante  and  adviser,  the  visiting  nurse 
and  Lady  Bountiful,  of  every  mother,  wife,  and 
widow  in  the  neighborhood;  and  they  were  all  "for 
her"  and  for  her  son.  It  was  her  influence  as  much 
as  anything  that  elected  him  to  the  legislature. 


That  happened  in  1887,  when  he  was  twenty- 
four  years  old.  And  one  of  the  first  results  of  it  was 
to  bring  Mary  Gatecliff  back  into  his  life.  She 
wrote,  congratulating  him  on  his  election,  formally. 
He  went  to  call  on  her,  because  he  was  an  awkward 
letter  writer  and  he  had  self-confidence  enough  to  go 
anywhere.  He  did  not  hesitate  even  when  he 
found  the  Gatecliffs  living  on  West  Twenty-third 
Street  in  one  of  the  houses  of  London  Terrace 
that  still  maintained  the  tradition  of  the  row's 
earlier  magnificence. 

Gatecliff  had  become  a  wholesale  grocer,  with  a 
string  of  retail  shops;  his  wife  had  developed  formal 
manners  and  a  complete  loss  of  hearing;  Buttony 
had  married  a  daughter  of  money  and  moved  still 
farther  uptown;  and  Mary  Gatecliff  was  not  at  all 
the  youngster  who  had  kissed  Dan  good-by  in  the 
hallway  on  Hudson  street.  She  had  been  to  a  finish 
ing  school.  She  was  meditatively  quiet,  a  solitary 
reader,  silent  and  observant.  It  seemed  impossible 

[69] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

that  she  could  ever  have  any  but  a  feeling  of  kindly 
superiority  for  Big  Dan.  She  probably  thought 
that  she  had  written  to  him  out  of  such  a  feeling. 

But  Dan  had  once  roused  in  her  a  tumultuous 
emotion,  and  he  was  the  only  man  who  had.  That, 
I  think,  is  the  explanation  of  the  affair  that  followed 
— one  of  those  mysterious  love  affairs  that  are  the 
despair  of  parents  and  the  scandal  of  friends.  Her 
intelligence  had  been  educated  out  of  all  sympathy 
with  him,  but  there  was  something  else  in  her  that 
had  not.  Her  emotions  responded  to  their  old 
stimulus  at  sight  of  him,  and  she  was  struck  with 
a  flush  and  thrill  that  startled  her.  His  voice  shook 
her;  she  did  not  know  why.  He  was  aware  of  it. 
He  had  a  compelling  tone  of  confident  familiarity, 
and  he  took  her  hand,  smiling  at  her.  He  called 
her  "Mary"  cheerfully,  and  talked  to  her  about 
her  former  neighbors  and  old  times,  with  laughter. 
He  seemed  genuinely  big  hearted,  human,  rough, 
and  winning.  He  was  humorous  about  himself  and 
his  mother  and  his  political  "spiels"  and  his  career. 
"She's  so  pop'lar,"  he  said,  "that  they've  elected 
me.  I  tell  her  she'll  have  to  gi'  me  her  proxy  so's 
I  c'n  vote."  And  while  Mary  Gatecliff  was  critical 
of  his  slurred  speech  and  his  "Bowery  mannerisms," 
she  forgave  them  because,  in  the  back  of  her  mind, 
she  was  thinking  that  they  could  be  easily  corrected. 

She  parted  from  him  with  a  girlish  friendliness 
of  manner  that  would  have  seemed  impossible  to 
her  a  few  hours  earlier.  She  hurried  to  bed  and 

[70] 


BIG  DAN  REILLY 


then  lay  awake,  excited,  far  into  the  night,  with 
her  reason  apparently  cool  about  him,  but  her 
emotions  deeply  stirred. 

And  it  was  not  many  days  before  her  reason  took 
the  tone  of  her  emotion.  She  believed  that  Abra 
ham  Lincoln  might  have  been  such  a  young  poli 
tician  as  Dan  if  Lincoln  had  been  less  melancholy. 
Dan  was  of  the  people,  uneducated,  a  poor  boy; 
but  she  knew  that  most  of  the  leaders  of  the  nation 
had  been  that.  She  began  to  feel  that  what  he 
most  needed  was  a  friend  with  high  ideals  and  the 
culture  of  a  better  class  to  influence  and  guide  him. 

She  wrote  him  again,  sending  him  a  book  of  which 
she  had  spoken  to  him.  Her  father  saw  him  on 
his  second  visit,  but  her  father's  business  had  given 
him  a  great  respect  for  the  financial  virtue  of  po 
litical  influence,  and  he  was  pleasant  to  the  young 
Assemblyman.  Her  mother  saw  him;  but  her 
mother,  being  deaf,  talked  unceasingly  to  cover  her 
infirmity.  She  seemed  rather  more  than  pleasant. 
Dan  was  used  to  having  people  pleasant  to  him;  it 
did  not  impress  him.  Mary  talked  to  him  of  his 
plans  and  his  ambitions,  with  an  encouraging  in 
terest.  He  was  not  unused  to  young  feminine 
interest,  either.  He  jollied  her  as  he  jollied  his 
mother;  and  because  he  was  leaving  for  Albany  next 
day  he  put  his  arm  around  her  at  parting,  and  kissed 
her  good-by  as  he  might  have  kissed  his  mother. 

She  wrote  him  in  Albany,  a  letter  that  accepted 
her  surrender  to  his  caress  as  if  it  had  been  the  last 

[71] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

surrender  of  love.  He  was  deeply  moved  by  it.  It 
was  the  sort  of  letter  that  only  an  intense  and 
idealistic  girl  can  write  when  all  her  barriers  are 
broken  down.  Dan  replied  clumsily,  jocularly,  but 
in  terms  which  he  had  never  before  been  able  to  use 
to  anyone  but  his  mother. 

8 

He  arrived  at  the  legislature  like  a  fraternity 
athlete  entering  a  college  where  friends  have  pre 
ceded  him.  It  was  a  legislature  that  was  acclaimed 
by  the  newspapers  of  the  day  the  "most  corrupt, 
discreditable,  unprincipled,  and  venal  that  ever 
assembled  in  the  capital  of  any  civilized  com 
munity."  Big  Dan  and  his  friends  were  as  little 
worried  by  that  criticism  as  if  they  were  the  class 
of  '87  being  scolded  by  their  teachers.  He  attended 
committee  meetings  and  debates  as  a  college 
"sport"  attends  lectures.  He  had  nothing  but 
good-natured  contempt  for  Buttony  Gatecliff — now 
Harold  A.  Gatecliff,  agent  of  the  Citizens'  League — 
whom  he  found  lobbying  in  support  of  various  re 
form  measures.  In  Dan's  eyes  Gatecliff  had  become 
a  studious  and  spectacled  prig,  and  after  one 
unpleasant  interview  they  agreed  to  go  their  sepa 
rate  ways.  It  never  occurred  to  Dan  that  Buttony 
might  be  dangerous.  And  he  did  not  mention  Mary 
to  him.  That,  he  thought,  was  no  affair  of  Buttony 's. 

The  legislators  were  "doing  business  on  a  basis 

172] 


BIG  DAN  REILLY 


of  from  five  dollars  upward."     Some  of    the  up 
state  members  were  quoted  at  one  hundred  dollars 
each.     Big  Dan  organized  a  "union  to  maintain 
prices"  among  the  New  York  and  Brooklyn  mem 
bers,  and  they  got  as  high  as  five  hundred  dollars 
each  for  their  votes.    They  helped  to  pass  a  bill  to 
free  insurance  companies  from  back  taxes  of  $700,- 
000  and  future  taxes  of  $200,000  a  year.    Big  Dan 
voted  for  it  gayly.    He  voted  to  expend  a  million 
and  a  half  for  patent  ballot  boxes,  to  the  sole  profit 
of  the  firm  that  made  them  and  the  members  who 
voted  for  them.    For  his  constituency  he  obtained 
a  free  public  bath  and  permission  for  newspaper 
vendors  to  erect  news  stands  "within  the  stoop 
line"  on  New  York  City  streets.     He  helped  to 
introduce  a  number  of  "strike  bills" — which  are 
bills  threatening  to  penalize  corporations  that  are 
rich  enough  and  timid  enough  to  pay  for  immunity. 
He  made  his  mark  as  a  humorist  at  committee  meet 
ings.    His  union  to  maintain  prices  became  known 
as  "the  Black  Horse  Cavalry,"  and  he  led  it  as 
ably  as  he  had  led  the  Hylos.    He  had  more  money 
than  his  mother  could  give  away;  he  bought  her  an 
old    red-brick    house    in    the    Greenwich    Village 
quarter;  and  he  financed  his  first  saloon,  with  one 
of  his  boyhood  friends  as  its  proprietor.    His  politi 
cal  influence  protected  it  from  the  police.     Alto 
gether,  his  first  year  in  the  legislature  was  happy  and 
profitable  in  a  boyish  and  innocent  sort  of  way — 
"innocent"  in  his  eyes,  that  is. 

[73] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

His  affair  with  Mary  Gatecliff  ran  along  less 
happily  for  her  than  for  him,  since  she  found  herself 
committed  to  a  man  who  remained  obviously  more 
free  than  she.  His  affection  had  no  vows.  It  did 
not  even  find  words  for  itself.  And  it  masked  its 
sincerity  in  boyish  grins  and  clumsy  playfulness. 
She  trembled  when  he  kissed  her,  suffocated  by  the 
beating  of  her  heart ;  and  then  she  wept,  when  he  was 
gone,  because  she  could  neither  resist  him  nor  ap 
parently  make  him  respect  the  weakness  that  yielded 
to  him.  She  denied  her  feeling  for  him  to  her  father. 
She  could  not,  in  self-respect,  admit  the  humiliating 
terms  of  it.  "We're  just  friends,"  she  said. 

Love,  to  her,  was  something  abstract  and  tran 
scendental,  of  the  nature  of  a  religion,  exacting  in  its 
worship  and  rather  solemn.  To  Dan  it  was  a  merely 
human  relation.  He  took  her  affection  as  he  took 
his  mother's.  He  repaid  it — as  he  repaid  his 
mother's — with  rough  kindliness  when  he  was  with 
her  and  devoted  thoughts  when  he  was  away.  And 
he  left  the  unconsidered  future  to  develop  itself 
and  their  relations,  sure  of  himself  and  his  success. 

9 

So  he  came  to  the  crisis  and  the  turning  point  in 
his  career.  Imagine  him  a  burly  twenty-six,  rubi 
cund  and  round-faced,  well  dressed,  prosperous, 
known  to  everybody  in  his  district  and  liked  by  them 
all.  His  passage  down  his  native  street  was  a  tri- 

[74] 


BIG  DAN  REILLY 


umphal  progress.  The  policeman  on  the  beat 
saluted  him.  *  The  loafers  on  the  saloon  corners 
stopped  him  to  borrow  money.  The  street  children 
pointed  him  out  and  followed  him.  The  shop 
keepers  shook  hands  with  him.  He  was  buttonholed 
and  solicited  by  constituents  and  office  seekers,  and 
he  released  himself  with  a  broad  smile  and  a  pat  on 
the  shoulder  and  such  promises  as  he  knew  he  could 
keep.  He  smiled  at  the  girls,  with  his  hat  on  the 
back  of  his  head.  He  touched  the  brim  of  it  with  a 
wave  of  the  hand  when  their  mothers  greeted  him. 
He  joked  with  the  priest.  A  universal  favorite,  as 
kindly  as  a  prince  who  wishes  to  be  popular,  he 
walked  with  the  sun  on  his  face  and  a  prosperous 
future  before  him.  And  he  never  looked  back  at 
the  past  that  followed  him — an  invisible  figure, 
which  he  thought  nobody  saw,  because  he  never 
looked  at  it  himself — until  suddenly  that  figure 
stepped  up  beside  him,  took  his  arm  firmly,  and 
walked  him  into  a  future  that  was  a  sinister  coun 
terfeit  of  all  he  had  expected. 

There  was  to  be  a  centennial  celebration  in  New 
York  City  in  1889,  and  in  April  of  that  year  a  bill 
was  introduced  at  Albany  to  give  the  city  police  the 
power  to  arrest  suspected  criminals  at  sight,  so  as  to 
protect  the  centennial  crowds  from  pickpockets 
and  street  walkers  and  hold-up  men.  Big  Dan 
opposed  the  bill  on  the  legitimate  grounds  that  nc 
man  or  woman  should  be  arrested  unless  upon 
specific  charges.  He  fought  the  bill  in  committee. 

6  [75] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

He  fought  it  on  the  floor  of  the  house.  He  rallied 
his  Black  Horse  Cavalry  against  it,  traded  influence 
to  defeat  it,  and  "swapped"  votes. 

Unfortunately,  Inspector  Mehlin  was  behind  the 
bill,  and  so  was  the  Citizens'  League.  Mehlin  called 
in  the  newspaper  men  and  gave  them  an  interview 
in  which  he  described  Big  Dan  as  "the  associate 
of  thieves  and  criminals,"  "a  political  crook,  prize 
fighter,  and  strong-arm  man,"  "opposed  to  the  bill 
because  all  the  criminals  were  his  friends  and  if  the 
bill  went  through  it  would  hurt  his  saloon  business." 
And  the  secretary  of  the  Citizens'  League  followed 
with  a  sketch  of  Big  Dan's  life,  supplied  by  Gate- 
cliff:  "Born  amid  the  most  depraved  surroundings 
.  .  .  the  leader  of  a  gang  of  young  ruffians  known 
to  the  police  as  the  Hylo  gang  ...  his  manners 
and  speech  those  of  the  typical  'tough'  .  .  .  the 
companion  of  thieves  and  prostitutes  ...  his 
saloons  their  known  resorts  .  .  .  perhaps  the  most 
dangerous  man  that  New  York  City  ever  sent  to 
Albany  .  .  .  the  recognized  leader  of  that  group 
of  piratical  Assemblymen  know  as  'the  Black  Horse 
Cavalry'  .  .  .  the  king  of  the  underworld  ...  a 
political  brigand  holding  his  followers  together  by 
the  cohesive  power  of  public  plunder,"  etc.,  etc. 

Big  Dan  woke  next  morning  to  find  himself 
infamous.  In  vain  he  denied  the  statements  on  the 
floor  of  the  house.  He  was  not  convincing.  He 
would  not  desert  his  friends,  Barney  This  and  Fitzey 
That,  thieves  and  burglars,  whom  Mehlin  had 

[761 


BIG  DAN  REILLY 


named.  He  admitted  that  he  knew  them,  but  denied 
that  his  friendship  was  guilty.  He  could  not  deny 
his  leadership  of  the  Black  Horse.  Not  to  their 
faces.  He  spoke  lamely  and  confusedly.  He  de 
feated  the  bill,  but  he  did  not  clear  himself.  He 
could  not.  Mehlin  had  made  too  picturesque  and 
colorful  a  figure  of  him.  The  Albany  correspondents 
took  it  up.  The  editorial  writers  enlarged  on  it. 
And  Dan's  place  in  the  social  system  was  forever 
fixed. 

He  did  not  realize  it.  It  was  years  before  he 
realized  it. 

Mary  Gatecliff  saw  her  brother,  learned  the  trutn, 
about  the  Hylos  and  about  the  legislature,  and 
wrote  to  Dan:  "It  is  terrible.  There  is  nothing  I 
can  say.  Do  not  come  again.  I  could  not  trust 
myself  to  speak  to  you."  And  when  he  called  she 
would  not  see  him;  and  when  he  wrote  she  did  not 
answer. 

That  cut  him  to  the  vitals.  He  could  not  picture 
any  circumstances  in  which  he  would  have  turned 
his  back  on  Mary  before  her  enemies.  It  put  her  in 
a  class  with  her  brother;  they  had  "a  yellow 
streak." 

Dan's  criminal  associates  had  not.  They  rallied 
to  him.  They  elected  him  vice-president  of  the 
Phelan  Association,  and  made  speeches  to  him  as 
"the  man  who  never  went  back  on  a  friend."  The 
underworld  had  found  a  champion;  they  crowded 
to  his  saloon.  The  neighbors  came  to  assure  his 

177] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

mother  that  whatever  the  lying  police  and  the  news 
papers  might  say,  they  knew  that  Danny  was  a  good 
boy.  Most  significant  of  all,  Cass  Harley  came. 

And  with  Cass  Harley,  Dan's  future  took  him  by 
the  arm.  Harley  was  then  a  corporation  lawyer, 
lobbyist,  and  "fixer."  The  Black  Horse  Cavalry 
had  been  worrying  him  and  his  clients.  He  came  to 
make  peace.  He  came  to  offer  Dan  an  alliance  with 
the  financial  powers  upon  whom,  as  a  piratical 
Assemblyman,  Dan  had  been  preying. 

"We  need  a  leader  in  the  legislature,  Dan,"  he 
said.  "The  boys  won't  follow  Cassidy.  You  and 
your  friends  had  us  blocked  a  half  dozen  times  last 
session,  and  it's  going  to  be  worse  now.  We  need 
you  and  we  can  take  care  of  you." 

Dan  asked,  only,  "Can  you  get  Mehlin  fer  me?" 

"Yes,"  Harley  promised,  "we  can  get  Mehlin. 
And  we  can  stop  most  of  this  newspaper  stuff." 

"I  don't  care  about  the  papers,"  Dan  said. 
"They  can't  hurt  me  down  here.  But  I  want 
Mehlin's  scalp.  He  lied  about  me." 

"We  all  know  that,"  Harley  assured  him, 
although  he  was  there  because  he  believed  what 
Mehlin  had  said.  "Tell  me,  can  we  help  your 
organization  in  any  way?  Need  any  campaign 
contributions?  " 

"I'll  see  y'  about  that  later."  Dan  rose  heavily, 
to  end  the  interview.  "Get  Mehlin  first." 

Harley  nodded.  "It  may  take  me  a  little  time. 
I'll  begin  right  away." 

[78] 


BIG  DAN  REILLY 


He  "got"  Mehlin.  He  got  him  so  painfully  that 
Mehlin  came  to  Dan,  in  an  attempt  to  save  himself, 
and  apologized  and  begged  for  his  place.  That 
simply  made  him  "a  quitter."  Dan  went  down 
into  his  change  pocket  and  drew  out  some  silver. 

"Mehlin,"  he  said,  "you  once  ga'  me  a  quarter 
more'n  I'd  earned  blackin'  boots.  It  was  the  only 
decent  thing  y'  ever  did.  Take  it,  an'  get  out 
before  I  throw  y'  out.  We're  quits." 

Here  was  Reilly's  first  conspicuous  public  display 
of  power.  It  marked  him  as  an  autocrat  to  the 
underworld.  It  brought  a  thousand  willing  agents 
to  his  service.  And  with  these  adherents  at  one  end 
of  the  social  system  and  Cass  Harley  and  his 
clients  at  the  other,  he  was  supported  by  a  com 
bination  of  influence  that  was  invincible.  He  was 
made  the  political  boss  of  his  district.  He  was  no 
longer  "Big  Dan";  he  was  "the  Big  One."  When 
Jimmy  Phelan  died,  the  Phelan  Association  became 
the  Dan  Reilly  Association,  with  Granny  Reilly  as 
the  empress  dowager  behind  the  throne.  Under  her 
direction  as  much  as  Dan's,  it  developed  into  a 
political  association  for  the  distribution  of  dis 
criminating  alms.  An  official  chaplain  attended 
marriages,  christenings,  and  funerals  to  leave 
flowers  "from  Big  Dan."  A  dispossess  man  went 
to  court  every  morning  for  lists  of  evicted  ten 
ants  and  gave  them  aid.  A  recognized  place  finder 
occupied  himself  getting  work  for  voters  from 
every  business  man  and  corporation  in  New  York 

[79] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

that  could  be  reached  by  the  Big  One;  and  with  Cass 
Harley  to  assist,  there  were  few  that  could  not  be 
reached.  But,  unlike  any  of  his  predecessors  in  such 
a  situation,  Reilly  did  not  sell  out  to  the  powers 
whom  Harley  served.  He  did  not  even  lose  himself 
among  the  higher-ups.  He  stuck  to  his  district.  He 
spoke  of  sacred  Headquarters  as  "the  dead  man's 
rest,"  and  kept  away  from  it.  He  poured  great 
sums  of  money  through  the  Dan  Reilly  Association 
into  the  needy  purses  of  his  constituents,  and  took 
from  them,  in  return,  their  votes.  Thanks  to  his 
mother,  he  had  made,  unconsciously,  an  important 
discovery  in  the  science  of  democratic  government — 
a  discovery  that  put  him  at  last  on  the  balcony  at 
Headquarters.  It  was  this : 

Among  business  men,  farmers,  manufacturers, 
and  such,  a  voter  marks  his  ballot  in  support  of  the 
party  that  gives  him  either  a  policy  or  a  tariff  to 
protect  his  livelihood.  But  there  are  no  farmers  or 
manufacturers  or  accumulations  of  invested  capital 
among  the  tenement  dwellers.  When  those  people 
vote  for  the  party  that  assures  their  livelihood,  they 
vote  for  the  party  that  gives  them  jobs.  Big  Dan's 
political  machine  became  an  organization  that 
gave  the  workingman,  the  poor,  the  unemployed, 
and  the  petty  criminal  work  or  money  or  protection 
in  exchange  for  their  votes.  Reilly  became  the 
Hanna  of  his  party,  locally. 

He  was  soon  dictating  to  Cass  Harley;  and 
Harley,  angered,  assisted  the  newspapers  and  the 

[80] 


BIG  DAN  REILLY 


Citizens'  League  in  an  attempt  to  destroy  him. 
They  made  the  Big  One  a  social  outlaw,  as  pic 
turesque  as  Robin  Hood;  but  he  polled  an  over 
whelming  vote  in  his  district,  dictated  terms  to 
Harley's  clients,  and  ended  Harley's  political  career. 
Then  he  reached  for  the  principal  backers  of  the 
Citizens'  League  and  forced  them  to  drop  Gate- 
cliff,  who  as  its  secretary,  had  directed  the  publicity 
against  him.  He  even  fought  the  party  Boss  and 
defeated  him  in  a  characteristic  activity. 

The  Boss  was  interested  in  horse  breeding  and 
racing;  his  henchmen  introduced  a  bill  at  Albany  to 
suppress  pool  rooms  because  pool  rooms  hurt  the 
race  tracks  by  making  it  unnecessary  to  go  to  the 
races  in  order  to  bet;  and  Reilly,  leading  the  pool 
room  forces,  proposed  another  bill  making  all  bet 
ting  illegal,  whether  on  the  tracks  or  in  the  pool 
rooms.  The  reformers  flocked  to  Reilly's  support. 
The  Boss,  in  order  to  get  Big  Dan  to  withdraw  his 
bill,  had  to  withdraw  his  own.  He  never  forgave 
Big  Dan  and  was  never  asked  to.  "What  do  I  care 
fer  Headquarters,"  Reilly  laughed.  "I  can  carry 
my  distric'  whether  I'm  in  th'  organization  er  not." 
He  carried  it  when  a  reform  wave  engulfed  the  party 
in  every  other  district  of  the  city,  and  it  was  he  who 
served  notice  on  the  Boss  that  his  abdication  was 
expected  as  a  consequence  of  that  defeat. 

He  was  now  at  the  point  where  he  should  have 
been  able  to  assume  the  crown  of  his  career.  And 
he  could  not  touch  it.  Mehlin  and  Gatecliff  and 

[81] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

Cass  Harley  and  the  Citizens'  League  had  done 
their  work  too  well.  The  rival  leaders  at  Head 
quarters  could  not  oppose  his  power,  but  they  did 
not  conceal  from  him  the  obvious  fact  that  to  put  a 
man  of  his  reputation  on  the  party  throne  would 
mean  the  public  ruin  of  the  party.  The  reform 
wave  was  still  running  high. 

"Better  fake  up  a  stool  pigeon,  Dan,"  they 
advised  him,  "an'  work  behind  him  till  this  blows 
over.  We  know  it  ain't  true,  what  they  say  of  yuh. 
But  the  public  don't  know  it." 

In  the  secret  silences  of  his  thought  he  blamed 
it  all  on  Gatecliff,  and  whatever  business  or  under 
taking  Gatecliff  entered  on  he  contrived  to  blight 
it,  mysteriously.  Mary  Gatecliff  tried  to  see  him. 
She  wrote  to  ask  for  an  interview.  He  did  not 
answer.  She  persisted  with  a  letter  begging  him 
not  to  ruin  her  brother.  He  muttered,  "What  do 
you  two  think  yuh've  done  to  me?  "  and  threw  the 
letter  in  the  waste  basket. 

When  Mary  married  the  head  of  the  traction 
company,  he  watched  for  Buttony  to  appear  in 
the  company's  affairs;  and  when  Gatecliff  showed 
as  a  confidential  legal  adviser  to  the  presi 
dent  of  the  concern,  Dan  set  a  new  trap  in  the 
shape  of  a  traction  franchise  with  which  he  intended 
to  "gold  brick"  them.  Gatecliff,  persecuted  as 
he  had  been  in  his  youth,  was  willing  again  to  pay 
tribute.  He  undertook  negotiations  with  Head 
quarters,  and  Dan  handed  him  over  to  a  lieutenant. 

[82] 


BIG  DAN  REILLY 


The  price  was  agreed  upon,  but  the  company  offered 
stock,  and  Dan  would  not  move  except  for  half  the 
amount  in  ready  money  paid  in  advance.  He  planned 
to  accept  that  bribe  and  then  secretly  to  manip 
ulate  the  legislature  to  refuse  the  franchise.  The 
traction  heads  had  to  take  his  word  as  his  bond. 
He  had  never  broken  his  word  in  the  past,  and 
everybody  knew  it. 

10 

It  was  toward  the  end  of  these  negotiations  that 
he  came  to  his  dramatic  moment  on  the  Head 
quarters  stairs. 

He  came  there  in  black  because  he  had  been  to 
the  funeral  of  his  mother.  He  came  there  feeling 
suddenly  empty,  bitter,  resentful — empty  of  all 
ambition  to  remain  in  control  at  Headquarters, 
now  that  his  mother  was  no  longer  alive  to  be  proud 
of  his  power;  bitter  because  of  the  public  obloquy 
under  which  both  he  and  his  mother  had  suffered; 
and  resentful  toward  those  best  men  of  the  com 
munity  who  dreaded  him,  despised  him,  and  waited 
on  him.  As  he  had  walked  down  the  aisle  of  the 
church,  behind  his  mother's  coffin,  he  had  seen 
Mary  Gatecliff  in  a  pew,  and  she  had  looked  at  him 
with  sympathy,  with  pity,  with  a  pleading  reproach. 
He  had  said  to  himself,  "Her  husband  made  her 
come,  to  jolly  me  along."  But  he  knew  better. 
Her  eyes  were  the  strained  eyes  of  a  victim  of  dis 
illusion,  looking  at  a  fellow  sufferer  in  unhappiness, 

[83] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

and  mutely  asking  him,  in  the  face  of  death,  why 
they  had  so  maimed  each  other's  lives. 

The  look  accused  him  and  accused  herself.  It 
forgave  him  and  asked  forgiveness.  And  with  that 
look  in  his  memory  he  paused  on  the  railed  landing 
of  the  stairs  and  saw  her  brother  and  her  husband 
below  him,  waiting  hopefully  for  the  word  from  him 
that  would  spring  the  fall  of  his  trap.  He  despised 
them.  He  was  ashamed  of  himself  and  of  them. 
He  wanted  to  insult  them  contemptuously  while  he 
saved  them.  And  he  wanted  to  slap  their  whole  re 
spected  world  in  the  face.  And  he  slapped  it. 
"The  rest  o'  yuh  can  go  home." 

11 

It  was  his  last  official  act  at  Headquarters.  "I'm 
sick,"  he  told  the  man  who  was  to  succeed  him. 
"An'  I'm  through  here.  That  deal  with  Gatecliff 
and  his  bunch,  that's  off.  If  anyone  wants  to  see 
me,  tell  'em  to  go  to  hell." 

He  retired  to  one  of  his  Bowery  lairs  and  took  to 
his  bed.  The  painted  woman  who  was  nursing  him 
persuaded  him  to  drink  some  hot  toddy,  to  put  him 
to  sleep.  It  went  to  his  head  and  he  talked  of  his 
mother. 

"I  had  a  funny  feelin'  up  there  at  the  cemet'ry," 
he  said.  "They  buried  her  on  the  side  of  a  hill. 
An'  the  sun  was  shinin'.  An'  they  dug  the  grave 
like  a  box,  cuttin'  it  down  straight  on  the  sides  an' 

[841 


BIG  DAN  REILLY 


makin'  the  corners  square,  you  know,  like  a  box. 
An'  the  shell  just  fitted  into  it  like  it  was  made  fer 
it.  An'  there  was  somethin'  about  the  look  o'  that 
grave,  an'  the  way  it  was  made,  that  all  of  a  sudden 
made  me  feel  contented  about  havin'  her  in  it  — 
somethin',  you  know,  consolin.'  An'  when  they 
lowered  her  into  it  the  shell  fitted  so  tight  that  the 
air  came  up  slow,  an'  when  she  settled  down  in  it 
it  made  a  sort  o'  sigh,  like  you're  happy."  He  began 
to  weep.  "I  never  knew  a  grave  c'u'd  be  like  that. 
It  —  it  looked  comfor'ble." 

"Now,"  the  woman  said,  impatiently,  "you 
ain't  goin'  to  talk  about  graves  bein'  comfortable. 
You  ain't  as  sick  as  all  that.  You  got  nothin'  but 
a  cold." 

And  Big  Dan,  like  a  great  child,  motherless, 
rolled  over  and  covered  his  face  with  the  pillow 
and  sobbed. 


One  of  the  frankest  of  our  foreign  critics  wrote  of 
Dan  at  the  height  of  his  power:  "He  is  a  living 
proof  that  the  workingman  believes  he  has  the  same 
right  to  vote  for  work  that  the  business  man  has  to 
vote  for  trade.  He  indicates  that  in  a  democracy 
where  all  are  politically  free  the  wage  slave  will  sell 
his  political  freedom  to  ameliorate  the  conditions  of 
his  economic  servitude.  He  signifies  that  poverty 
can  organize  and  follow  its  leader  and  plunder 
property  unabashed  by  all  the  moral  fulminations 

[85] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

of  its  victim.  He  means  that  no  reform  movement 
can  permanently  defeat  his  kind  until  the  reformers 
recognize  that  the  voter  on  the  lower  East  Side  has 
the  same  right  to  sell  his  vote  for  a  wage  as  the  voter 
on  the  upper  West  Side  has  to  sell  his  vote  for  an 


income." 


And  all  01  that  may  be  true,  but  I  think  if  this 
social  philosopher  had  seen  Dan  blubbering  into  a 
pillow,  he  might  have  understood  that  the  Big  One 
was  what  he  was  because  he  had  never  been  any 
thing  but  an  overgrown  boy,  with  merely  boyish 
ideals  of  loyalty  to  his  gang,  with  a  boy's  immature 
sense  of  responsibility  to  society,  with  all  a  boy's 
unsocialized  ego  instincts,  and  a  boy's  dependence 
on  affection,  and  a  boy's  hatred  for  his  censors,  and 
a  boy's  revolt  against  his  punishment. 


III.    MRS.  MTJRCHISON 
1 

YOU  remember  Mrs.  Murchison?  No.  I  suppose 
not.  Her  death  in  a  London  air  raid,  in  July, 
1916,  recalled  her  to  the  memory  of  the  American 
newspaper  morgues  for  only  two  or  three  sticks  of 
an  obituary.  And  the  name  of  her  son,  Major 
Wallace  Bruce,  printed  in  the  British  casualty  lists 
later  in  the  same  year,  went  unremarked  even  by 
our  newspapers,  so  far  as  I  saw.  Yet  Mrs.  Mur 
chison  and  her  son  were  once  very  distinguished 
Americans.  If  she  had  died  in  July,  twenty  years 
ago,  every  front  page  on  the  continent  would  have 
displayed  her  name  in  the  largest  type  of  the  day. 
She  had  achieved  distinction  in  the  way  that  is  most 
open  to  an  American  woman — she  had  married  a 
rich  man  and  been  accused  of  murdering  him. 

She  rather  marred  that  distinction,  finally,  by 
being  found  "not  guilty" — if  you  remember.  And 
if  you  do  not  remember,  you  have  forgotten  proba 
bly  because  of  the  very  fact  that  she  was  found  not 
guilty.  She  failed  to  reach  the  ultimately  memo 
rable  elevation  of  the  electric  chair;  and,  as  an  inno 
cent  woman  wrongly  suspected  of  murder,  she  ended 
by  being  proved  unworthy  of  that  natural  human 
interest  in  musee  monsters  with  which  you  had  read 

[87] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

of  her,  so  that  you  would  be  justified  in  dismissing 
her  from  your  memory  as  one  of  life's  minor  dis 
appointments  of  romantic  hope. 

I  am  venturing  to  recall  her  to  you  now  because 
I  have  learned  that  she  was  guilty.  She  killed  her 
husband.  And  she  killed  him  in  cold  blood. 


That  fact,  if  I  may  say  so,  makes  her  a  perfect 
specimen  for  my  purposes.  She  had  already  every 
thing  else  to  make  her  perfect.  She  was  intelligent. 
She  was  rich.  She  was  well  educated  and  well 
dressed.  She  had  the  manners  of  a  gentlewoman. 
And  she  was,  above  all,  appealingly  pretty.  When 
she  first  appeared  in  court  an  audible  breath  of 
surprised  pity  exhaled  like  a  gasp  from  the  crowd  in 
the  court  room,  «and  throughout  the  trial  public 
sympathy  fairly  brooded  over  her  in  an  attentive 
silence  as  she  spoke,  or  buzzed  in  suppressed  resent 
ful  whispers  over  the  testimony  of  the  witnesses 
against  her. 

For  me,  it  was  not  so  much  her  beauty  that  was 
moving — the  beauty  of  a  small  dark  woman  with 
large  eyes  and  the  sort  of  infantile  nose  that  stirs 
the  protective  strain  in  masculine  affection  irre 
sistibly.  What  did  for  me  was  her  contralto  voice 
when  she  took  the  stand  in  her  own  defense.  It 
was  a  thrilling,  throaty  voice,  full  of  husky  catches, 
tremulous  and  yet  strongly  frank.  It  was  a  strange 

[88] 


MRS.  MURCHISON 


voice  to  issue  from  such  a  frail  and  inexpressive 
figure.  And  it  was  accompanied  by  no  dramatic 
gesture  whatever.  Once  she  made  as  if  to  raise  her 
hand  in  protest  against  some  unnecessarily  offensive 
questions  which  the  prosecuting  attorney  asked  her, 
but  she  let  it  fall  back  again  into  her  lap,  where  the 
other  hand  clasped  it  with  an  odd  effect  of  comfort 
ing  it  silently.  And  I  seem  to  remember  her  slowly 
shaking  her  head  as  she  answered,  in  her  deepest 
tones:  "No.  No.  No."  But  for  the  most  part 
she  sat  motionless,  pale,  listening  with  mute  atten 
tion  and  replying  with  the  slightest  possible  move 
ment  of  the  lips,  as  if  everything  had  been  exhausted 
in  her  but  her  remarkable  voice  that  seemed  to  come 
out  of  the  depths  of  a  forlorn  spirit,  shaken  but 
innocent  and  not  afraid. 

It  was  impossible  to  associate  such  a  voice  with 
a  guilty  conscience.  And  even  before  we  had  heard 
her  voice — in  fact,  before  the  jury  was  impaneled — 
Al  ("Porky")  Orpen  of  the  Sun  was  willing  to  bet 
that  she  would  be  acquitted,  and  only  Tom  Mc- 
Quade  of  the  World  would  take  him  on  it.  Orpen, 
of  course,  was  playing  a  sympathetic  hunch;  he 
knew  nothing  of  the  case;  he  had  been  sent  to  the 
trial  as  what  would  now  be  called  a  "sob  artist," 
though  his  sobbing  was  sufficiently  subdued  by 
literary  artistry  to  be  acceptable  even  to  the  old 
Sun.  McQuade  was  using  his  reason.  He  had  been 
on  the  story  of  the  murder  from  the  day  it  broke. 
"She's  guilty,"  he  said.  "No  one  else  could  have 

[89] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

killed  him.  Wait  till  you  hear  the  evidence." 
Throughout  the  trial,  he  and  Orpen  argued  with 
each  other  contemptuously  whenever  a  recess  gave 
them  the  opportunity.  And  although  their  con 
flicting  advocacy  did  not  affect  the  jury,  it  is  im 
portant  to  this  study  of  Mrs.  Murchison,  for  out 
of  McQuade's  obstinate  belief  in  her  guilt  there 
came  to  me  the  first  grounds  of  proof  that  she  was 
guilty. 

Most  important  of  all — though  you  have  probably 
forgotten  this,  too — she  was  defended  by  Justin 
Littlejohn,  who  was  then  so  far  from  being  famous 
that  McQuade  was  the  only  one  of  us  at  the  press 
table  who  had  ever  seen  him  in  court  before.  He 
appeared  as  a  large,  leisurely,  prematurely  bald 
young  man  with  an  indolent  manner  in  repose  and 
a  deceptive  air  of  simplicity.  His  opponent  was  a 
fighting  lawyer,  eloquent  and  dramatic,  who  seemed 
to  be  setting  a  ring  pace  that  was  too  fast  for  poor 
Littlejohn.  He  objected  incessantly  to  Littlejohn's 
questions,  and  Littlejohn  did  not  seem  to  have  the 
punch  to  break  through  this  interference.  He  would 
say,  dispiritedly:  "If  my  learned  friend  objects,  I 
withdraw  the  question."  Or:  "My  client  and  I 
wish  only  to  bring  out  the  facts.  I  will  put  the 
question  in  any  form  that  will  be  acceptable  to  the 
other  side."  He  let  the  prosecution  ask  Mrs.  Mur 
chison  questions  that  the  judge  himself  objected  to, 
and  he  listened  silently  to  the  wrangle  that  ensued. 
When  he  rose  to  address  the  jury,  it  was  after  a 

[90] 


MRS.  MURCHISON 


peroration  from  the  state  attorney  that  mobilized 
all  the  emotions  of  melodrama  and  sent  them  storm 
ing  over  the  lines  of  the  defense  with  horse,  foot,  and 
artillery;  and  Little  John  spoke,  upon  the  reverber 
ations  of  that  uproar,  dryly  at  first,  and  then  con 
fidentially,  with  an  air  of  earnest  candor,  as  if  he 
were  arguing  a  proposition  in  Euclid  upon  which  a 
life  depended,  laying  all  his  cards  solemnly  on  the 
table  at  last,  and  ending:  "Gentlemen,  there  is 
the  truth  as  far  as  we  know  it.  It  is  for  you  to 
decide." 

I  should  not  have  observed  him  with  any  intelli 
gent  interest  at  all  if  McQuade  had  not  announced, 
halfway  through  the  trial,  "He'll  get  her  off!" 

"He'll  get  her  off,"  Orpen  chuckled,  "because 
she's  innocent." 

"Change  attorneys  with  me,"  McQuade  chal 
lenged,  like  the  Irish  after  the  Boyne,  "and  I'll  lick 
you  hands  down.  This  man's  a  great  criminal 
lawyer." 

Orpen  laughed.    "Hear  Mac  hunting  an  alibi!" 

None  of  us  liked  McQuade — he  was  too  cocksure 
and  egotistic;  but  we  all  respected  his  intelligence. 
Accordingly,  we  began  to  study  Littlejohn  like  a 
clinic  of  dramatic  critics  dissecting  a  new  Hamlet. 
And  I  decided — as  dramatic  critics  will — that  if 
Littlejohn  was  not  merely  "playing  himself,"  he 
was  a  genius.  That  is  to  say,  I  realized  that  if  he 
was  not  whole-souledly  convinced  of  his  client's 
innocence,  he  was  simulating  the  exterior  of  such  a 
7  [91] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

conviction  with  incredible  art.  But  then,  I  believed 
that  she  was  innocent. 

I  saw  only  one  doubtful  indication  that  Little  John 
was  playing  a  part.  It  was  when  Mrs.  Murchison 
was  being  cross-examined  by  the  attorney  for  the 
state.  We  had  been  watching  Littlejohn  to  see 
whether  he  showed  any  nervousness  while  the 
prosecution  picked  and  pulled  at  her  story.  He 
showed  nothing  but  a  massive  and  inert  confidence. 
Suddenly,  in  the  midst  of  her  account  of  her  married 
relations,  she  referred  to  her  husband  as  her 
"father,"  and  Littlejohn  dropped  his  eyes  to  the 
papers  on  the  table  before  him.  The  state  attorney 
corrected  her.  "You  mean  your  husband,"  he  said. 
She  replied,  "Yes,"  but  obviously  without  being 
aware  that  she  was  being  corrected.  A  moment 
later  she  said  "my  father"  again.  The  lawyer 
asked,  sarcastically,  "Why  do  you  refer  to  Mr. 
Murchison  as  your  father?"  She  looked  at  him 
bewildered,  with  a  queer,  confused  expression,  as 
if  she  realized  that  she  had  been  thinking  of  Mur 
chison  as  her  father.  She  murmured,  at  last,  "I 
don't  know." 

The  state  attorney  let  it  pass  with  a  sort  of  con 
temptuous  sniff.  Littlejohn  had  not  raised  his  eyes 
from  the  table.  His  face  had  not  changed  a  muscle. 
But  his  ears  had  turned  as  red  as  a  guilty  school 
boy's. 

I  could  make  nothing  significant  out  of  it  at  the 
time;  but  as  I  look  back  at  it  now  I  recognize  it  as 

[92] 


MRS.  MURCHISON 


the  one  betrayal  Littlejohn  made  of  the  fact  that  he 
knew  her  story  and  was  afraid  she  might  expose  her 
self  inadvertently. 


Her  husband,  as  you  may  recall,  was  old  Lucias 
Murchison,  who  began  life  as  a  telegraph  operator 
and  ended  as  the  controlling  owner  of  great  accumu 
lations  of  telegraph  and  telephone  stock.  He  was 
almost  as  eccentric  a  figure  in  Wall  Street  as  Russell 
Sage.  He  guarded  his  privacy  from  newspaper  in 
trusion  so  jealously  that  it  was  a  public  surprise 
when  the  murder  trial  disclosed  that  Mrs.  Murchi 
son  had  once  been  his  private  secretary.  She  was 
his  second  wife  and  he  was  her  second  husband. 
He  had  had  a  family  of  daughters  by  his  first  mar 
riage,  but  he  was  estranged  from  them.  She  had 
had  a  son,  romantically  named  Wallace  Bruce — her 
first  husband  having  been  one  "Aleck"  Bruce,  a 
court  stenographer — and  Wallace  was  living  in  the 
Murchison  household  at  the  time  of  the  murder. 

Murchison  was  killed  in  his  country  house  near 
Bedlington,  and  the  trial  was  held  at  the  county 
seat.  The  New  York  newspapers  sent  reporters,  of 
course;  and  there  was  an  audience  of  fashionable 
women  from  their  suburban  homes  in  the  hills;  but 
the  crowd  was  a  farm  crowd  that  was  larger  in  bad 
weather  than  when  the  conditions  were  good  for  fall 
plowing,  and  the  intelligence  of  the  jury  was  as 
difficult  to  appraise  as  a  country  jury's  always  is. 

[  93  ] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

The  state  attorney  kept  presenting  them  with  the 
dilemma:  "If  she  did  not  kill  him,  who  did?  No 
one  else  could  have  done  it."  Littlejohn  persisted 
in  the  simple  reiteration:  "She  is  innocent.  We  do 
not  know  who  killed  him,  but  she  is  innocent." 

It  was  an  easy  line  of  defense  to  take,  but  not  so 
easy  to  maintain  in  the  face  of  the  evidence. 

Murchison  had  been  found  dead  on  the  floor  of 
his  bedroom  with  his  throat  cut.  All  the  doors  of 
his  room  had  been  locked  on  the  inside  and  he  was 
lying  near  the  door  of  the  bathroom  that  communi 
cated  with  his  wife's  room.  His  razor,  from  the 
bathroom  shelf,  was  found  in  his  bed,  and  the  blood 
on  the  pillows  made  it  probable  that  his  throat  had 
been  cut  while  he  slept.  Blood  and  fingerprints  on 
the  knob  and  key  of  the  bathroom  door  indicated 
that  he  had  staggered  from  his  bed  to  close  and  lock 
that  door,  and  had  fainted  while  he  was  trying  to 
get  back  to  another  door  to  summon  help  from  the 
hall.  And  there  was  a  written  note  on  his  dresser 
top — a  note  in  an  unformed  •  girlish  backhand — 
saying:  "God  is  not  mocked.  Pray  for  me." 

Mrs.  Murchison,  suffering  from  insomnia,  had 
obtained  some  sleeping  tablets  from  her  physician 
on  the  previous  day;  she  had  taken  several  of  these 
before  going  to  bed  that  night ;  and  she  had  evidently 
taken  an  overdose,  because  her  maid  had  been  un 
able  to  waken  her  in  the  morning,  had  knocked 
frantically  on  Murchison's  door,  and,  failing  to 
arouse  him,  either,  had  telephoned  for  the  doctor. 


MRS.  MURCHISON 


It  was  some  time  before  the  physician  succeeded  in 
bringing  Mrs.  Murchison  back  to  consciousness. 
In  the  meantime  the  servants  had  forced  Murchi 
son' s  door  and  found  him  murdered. 

At  first,  rumor  had  it  that  Mrs.  Murchison  had 
killed  her  husband  and  tried  to  kill  herself.  But 
the  amazing  message  on  the  dresser  was  not  in  her 
handwriting.  She  wrote  a  very  professional,  flowing 
and  secretarial,  Spencerian  script.  And  if  she  had 
intended  to  make  a  confession  and  kill  herself,  why 
should  she  disguise  her  writing? 

It  was  the  theory  of  the  prosecution  that  she  had 
risen  in  the  night,  had  entered  her  husband's  room 
through  the  bathroom — taking  his  razor  from  the 
bathroom  shelf — and  had  cut  his  jugular  vein  while 
he  slept.  The  pain  of  the  wound  had  wakened  him. 
He  had  struggled  with  her  and  she  had  fled.  He 
had  locked  his  door  against  her  and  died  while  he 
was  trying  to  call  some  one  to  his  aid.  The  note  on 
the  dresser  had  been  written  by  her,  in  a  disguised 
hand,  to  cast  suspicion  elsewhere.  And,  to  account 
for  the  overdose  of  the  sleeping  draught,  it  was 
charged  that  she  had  taken  a  first  dose,  risen  in  the 
night,  written  the  message  in  a  disguised  hand, 
killed  her  husband,  taken  a  second  draught,  and 
slept  till  the  doctor  brought  her  to. 

This  was  an  arguable  theory  up  to  a  certain  point, 
but  there  were  several  difficulties  with  it.  A  maid 
had  attended  Mrs.  Murchison  in  her  rooms  that 
night  and  had  seen  her  prepare  for  bed.  Mrs. 

[95] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

Murchison  had  been  cheerful  at  the  prospect  of 
getting  a  good  night's  rest.  She  had  taken  her 
medicine  eagerly  and  fallen  asleep  within  an  hour — 
for  the  maid  had  returned  to  ask  her  some  question 
about  household  matters,  had  found  her  asleep, 
and  had  turned  out  an  electric  light  that  was  still 
burning  on  her  bedside  table.  This  maid  testified 
that  Mrs.  Murchison,  in  the  morning,  was  sleeping 
in  the  same  nightgown  in  which  she  had  retired, 
and  that  it  bore  no  evidences  whatever  of  any  such 
bloody  struggle  as  had  apparently  taken  place  in 
Murchison's  room.  The  doctor  testified  that  her 
hands  and  arms  showed  no  scratches,  no  bruises. 
She  had  been  working  in  the  flower  beds  that  after 
noon.  She  was  "very  choice"  about  her  hands,  as 
the  maid  said.  She  had  put  lotion  on  them  at  night 
and  had  gone  to  bed  in  gloves,  so  as  not  to  soil  the 
pages  of  the  book  with  which  she  intended  to  read 
herself  to  sleep.  The  book  was  on  the  coverlet  and 
she  still  wore  the  gloves  when  she  was  wakened. 
They  were  put  in  evidence  at  the  trial  so  that  the 
jury  might  see  there  were  no  blood  stains  on  them. 
They  were  old  white  gloves  that  showed  no  signs  of 
ever  having  been  cleaned. 

The  prosecution  tried  to  insinuate  that  she  had 
worn  gloves  in  order  to  overcome  the  danger  of 
leaving  fingerprints  on  the  razor,  on  the  door  handle, 
or  the  paper  on  which  she  wrote,  "God  is  not 
mocked."  Littlejohn  destroyed  that  insinuation 
with  one  earnest  sentence  in  his  summing-up:  "If 

[96] 


MRS.  MURCHISON 


a  woman  intended  to  murder  her  husband  in  gloves, 
so  as  to  leave  no  fingerprints,  she  would  hardly 
let  her  maid  see  her  making  her  guilty  preparations 
to  that  end;  she  would  put  on  the  gloves  secretly 
and  hide  them  when  she  took  them  off,  and  she 
would  hardly  choose  gloves  of  white  kid.99, 

Mrs.  Murchison  herself  destroyed  the  probability 
that  she  had  written  the  message  on  the  dresser  top. 
At  the  state  attorney's  direction,  on  the  witness 
stand,  she  wrote  and  rewrote,  "God  is  not  mocked. 
Pray  for  me,"  over  and  over,  with  her  gloves  on  and 
with  them  off,  in  an  attempted  backhand  and  even 
in  a  labored  imitation  of  the  guilty  script.  Nothing 
could  overcome  the  difference  between  the  faltering 
and  unformed  writing  of  the  message  and  her  own 
strong  and  professional  chirography.  The  writing 
experts  found  certain  letters  in  the  message  that 
resembled  hers,  but  their  testimony  was  no  more 
convincing  to  a  country  jury  than  such  testimony 
usually  is.  And  when  the  prosecution  made  her 
son  Wallace  write  the  message — as  if  hoping  to 
involve  him  as  her  tool  in  the  crime — their  effort 
was  accepted  as  an  admission  that  they  knew  Mrs. 
Murchison  had  not  written  it. 

It  was  scrawled,  in  lead  pencil,  on  the  back  of  an 
envelope  addressed  to  Murchison.  There  had  been 
a  number  of  letters  to  him  lying  on  the  dresser,  and 
the  murderer  had  evidently  taken  the  one  nearest 
at  hand.  And  there  had  been  handy,  too,  a  gold 
pocket  pencil  attached  to  a  watch  chain,  which 

[97] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

i 

Murchison  had  placed  there,  with  his  watch,  before 

he  went  to  bed.  No  fingerprints  were  recognizable  on 
the  metal ;  it  had  been  taken  up  carelessly  by  several 
persons  before  the  detectives  put  it  away  for  exam 
ination.  There  was  no  blood  on  the  envelope,  but,  of 
course,  it  was  obvious  that  the  message  had  been 
written  before  the  murderer  attacked  Murchison. 

Altogether,  there  was  no  definite  circumstantial 
evidence  to  connect  Mrs.  Murchison  with  the  in 
criminating  note.  It  used  the  terms  of  religious 
fanaticism,  and  she  was  not  even  a  church  member. 
Had  she  ever  heard  the  phrase,  "God  is  not 
mocked"?  Yes.  She  had  had  the  usual  religious 
instruction  in  her  youth.  Her  father  had  been  a 
very  devout  man,  and  she  thought  she  remembered 
him  saying,  "God  is  not  mocked."  She  could  not 
be  sure.  She  thought  it  was  a  quotation  from  the 
Bible,  but  she  could  not  place  it. 

Her  father,  for  religious  reasons,  objected  to  her 
marriage  with  her  first  husband,  an  agnostic.  She 
ran  away  from  home,  and  she  never  saw  her  father 
again.  He  died.  After  her  marriage  she  ceased 
attending  church.  She  did  not  think  of  religion 
very  often,  now.  Did  she  believe  in  hell?  She  did 
not  know.  She  thought  not.  In  her  girlhood  she 
had  worried  very  much  about  things  of  that  sort, 
but  now  she  just  tried  "to  be  kind  and  just  to 
people  and  not  to  do  anyone  any  harm."  She  did 
not  think  much  about  whether  she  would  be  pun 
ished  or  rewarded  in  another  world. 

[98] 


MRS.  MURCHISON 


"Do  you  believe,"  the  prosecutor  thundered, 
"that  murder  will  be  punished  in  the  other  world?" 

"Yes,"  she  said,  wearily,  "I  should  think  that 
would  be,  if  anything  was." 

He  threatened  her  with  an  accusing  forefinger. 
"Don't  you  know  it?  Doesn't  your  conscience  tell 
you?" 

"I  try  not  to  judge  people,"  she  replied.  "I 
don't  feel  capable  of  judging  wisely.  I'm  not  very 
intelligent." 

And  it  was  impossible  to  decide  whether  or  not 
she  knew  she  had  evaded  him. 

When  he  first  asked  her  to  write  the  words, 
"God  is  not  mocked.  Pray  for  me,"  she  hesitated 
and  held  back.  He  demanded,  "You  have  some 
aversion  to  writing  those  words,  have  you?"  And 
she  answered,  hoarsely:  "Yes.  I  was  fond  of  Mr. 
Murchison.  He  was  very  kind  to  me." 

This  pitifully  choked  reply  was  received  by  the 
court  room  with  a  sibilant  whisper  of  sympathy  that 
was  almost  a  hiss  against  the  prosecutor.  The  judge 
said  gravely,  "It  would  be  well  if  counsel  conducted 
his  cross-examination  so  as  to  give  less  the  impres 
sion  of  a  'third  degree.' "  And  the  attorney  for  the 
state  lost  his  temper,  argued  with  the  court,  was 
rebuked,  and  turned  sulky. 

Consequently,  he  approached,  with  some  emo 
tional  handicap,  the  problem  of  proving  Mrs. 
Murchison's  motive  for  the  murder.  He  asked  her 
whether  she  had  married  Murchison  for  money. 

[99] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

After  a  transparent  pause  for  thought,  she  replied: 
"I  wanted  a  home  for  myself  and  Wallace.  Mr. 
Murchison  offered  me  one.  I  respected  him.  He 
was  always  considerate,  gentle — " 

"Did  you  love  him?"  the  attorney  broke  in. 

"I— I  liked  him,"  she  said.    "He  was " 

"Did  you  love  him?" 

"There  are  so  many  different  sorts  of  love " 

"You  know  the  sort  I  mean." 

"He  was  a  good  man " 

"Did  you  love  him?" 

She  thought  a  moment,  as  if  examining  herself, 
looking  up  at  the  dingy  court-room  window  with 
unseeing  eyes.  Her  face  changed.  "Why,  yes," 
she  said,  deeply,  as  if  realizing  the  truth  for  the 
first  time.  "I  think  I  did." 

The  attorney  tried  to  cover  his  discomfiture  by 
asking,  "Did  you  get  the  money  you  married  him 
for?" 

Littlejohn  interposed,  "If  the  court  will  per 
mit " 

"Objection  sustained,"  the  judge  snapped.  "There 
is  no  evidence  that  she  married  him  for  money." 

"Well,  then,"  the  prosecutor  sneered,  "was  your 
allowance  as  large  as  you  expected  it  to  be?" 

"I  hadn't  expected  anything  definite,"  she  ex 
plained.  "He  paid  all  the  household  bills  and  left 
me  a  check  for  myself  on  the  first  of  every  month." 

"And  your  son?  Did  he  have  all  the  money  he 
needed?" 

[1001 


MRS.  MURCHISON 


"I  never  took  money  from  Mr.  Murchison  for" iny 
son,"  she  said.    "I  supported  him  out  of  my  allow 


ance." 


"Did  you  have  some  feeling  about  taking  money 
from  Mr.  Murchison  for  your  son?" 

"Yes." 

"Why?" 

Well,  it  appeared — to  summarize  a  tedious  ex 
amination — that  she  and  Murchison  had  had  a 
tacit  disagreement  about  the  boy's  education,  about 
her  keeping  him  tied  to  her  apron  strings,  about  the 
way  in  which  she  mollycoddled  him,  and  so  forth. 
Murchison  had  evidently  felt  some  jealousy  of  her 
devotion  to  the  boy.  And  he  was  not  very  sympa 
thetic  with  young  people.  He  was  just,  but  he  was 
stern.  She  had  often  felt  depressed  because  Mur 
chison  did  not  take  the  boy  into  his  affection.  It 
was  the  one  thing  in  the  world  that  had  worried  her. 

"As  a  result  of  this  worry,"  the  prosecutor  asked 
her,  "did  you  ever  feel  an  impulse  to  kill  your 
husband?" 

"If  I  had,  she  said,  "I  should  have  thought  I 
was  going  insane." 

"Did  you  ever  think  that  you  would  be  happier 
if  your  husband  were  dead?" 

"No.  I  was  happier  than  I  had  ever  been  before. 
My  life  hadn't  been  an  easy  one  before  my  marriage 
to  him." 

"Did  you  know  that  in  case  of  his  death  you  were 
entitled  to  a  third  of  his  estate  under  the  law?" 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

"He  was  not  unwell.  We  had  never  spoken  of 
his  death.  I  did  not  know  anything  about  his 
financial  affairs." 

"Did  you  know  that  you  were  entitled  to  a  third 
of  his  estate?" 

"I  didn't  know  how  large  the  estate  was." 

"I  appeal  to  the  court,"  he  cried,  exasperated, 
"to  direct  the  witness  to  answer  my  question." 

The  judge  said,  sourly,  "She  seems  to  be  answer 
ing  the  intent  and  purpose  of  it." 

"Did  you  know  how  large  your I  mean, 

did  you  know  you  were  entitled  to  a  third  of  your 
husband's  estate?" 

"No,"  she  said.  "I  thought  it  depended  on  his 
will." 

"Then  you  did  think  about  his  will,  didn't  you?" 

"Not  till  after  he  was  dead.  Then  I  wondered 
what  was  going  to  become  of  me." 

4 

Looking  back  on  that  cross-examination  now — 
with  what  I  have  since  learned — I  recognize  as 
guileful  the  way  in  which  she  avoided  giving  a 
direct  answer  to  the  prosecutor's  question  about 
whether  she  had  ever  felt  an  impulse  to  kill  her 
husband.  But  I  can  recall  no  reserve  of  expression, 
no  change  of  tone,  to  indicate  where  guile  was 
hidden.  Her  manner  throughout  was  the  manner 
of  an  innocent,  defenseless  woman,  grief-stricken, 

[102] 


MRS.  MURCHISON 


resigned,  and  dignified.    It  was  impossible  for  any 
merely  human  jury  to  find  her  guilty. 

But,  if  she  had  not  killed  her  husband,  who  had? 

Murchison  had  been  accustomed  to  lock  all  the 
doors  of  his  bedroom  except  the  door  to  the  bath 
room  that  communicated  with  his  wife's  chamber. 
And  Mrs.  Murchison  usually  locked  the  outer  door 
of  her  room,  too,  so  that  their  sleeping  apartments 
were  cut  off  from  the  rest  of  the  house.  She  had 
gone  to  bed  on  this  night  before  the  maid  had 
finished  in  the  room.  She  had  intended  to  rise  and 
lock  the  door  later,  after  she  had  read  awhile,  but 
the  drug  had  evidently  overcome  her  unexpectedly. 
The  murderer,  therefore,  had  had  access  to  Murchi- 
son's  room,  from  the  hall,  through  her  bedchamber. 
But  if  Murchison  had  not  been  attacked  by  her, 
why  did  he  not  go  to  her  for  aid?  Why,  with  his 
last  effort,  did  he  lock  his  door  against  her  and  try 
to  summon  assistance  elsewhere? 

Why,  indeed? 

The  prosecution  began  its  case  by  showing  that 
the  downstairs  doors  and  windows  had  been  locked 
all  night.  And  the  servants  who  opened  them  in 
the  morning  testified  that  none  of  them  had  been 
tampered  with.  Murchison's  bedroom  windows,  on 
the  second  floor,  had  been  open,  but  they  were 
covered  with  wire  fly  screens  that  hooked  on  the 
inside.  Mrs.  Murchison' s  windows  wrere  similarly 
protected.  There  were  no  footprints  in  the  flower 
beds  beneath  those  windows,  no  ladder  marks  in 

[103] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

the  mold,  and  no  holes  in  the  screens  through  which 
a  man  on  a  ladder  could  have  reached  the  screen 
hooks.  The  outer  doors  were  all  fitted  with  old- 
fashioned  locks,  they  could  not  be  opened  with 
latch  keys,  and  all  the  big  iron  keys  had  been  in 
their  locks  that  morning.  No  one  had  entered  the 
house  from  the  outside  till  the  doctor  arrived.  It 
seemed  beyond  doubt,  therefore,  that  Murchison 
had  been  killed  by  some  one  in  the  family. 

But  the  servants,  and  their  relations  with  Mur 
chison,  and  the  conditions  in  the  family  generally, 
were  all  as  old-fashioned  as  the  doors.  Murchison 
had  lived  a  simple,  patriarchal  sort  of  life  in  the 
country,  surrounded  by  retainers  who  had  been  with 
him  for  years.  The  housekeeper,  who  was  sixty 
years  old,  was  the  wife  of  the  gardener,  who  was 
seventy.  The  dining-room  maid  and  the  housemaid 
were  her  nieces.  Mrs.  Murchison's  maid  was  a 
simple-looking  Irish  girl,  "just  out  from  the  old 
country,"  a  relative  and  protegee  of  the  coachman, 
who  was  a  character  in  his  own  right.  And  so  with 
the  others.  They  were  all  put  on  the  witness  stand, 
and  they  added  some  comedy  to  the  case,  but 
their  testimony  made  it  impossible  to  believe  that 
any  of  them  could  have  killed  Murchison.  They 
spoke  of  him  with  reverential  and  affectionate  awe. 
He  overpaid  them.  And  he  had  never  corrected  or 
complained  of  one  of  them  in  his  life,  apparently. 

The  housekeeper  ruled  them  for  him — and  for 
Mrs.  Murchison — with  a  motherly  tyranny.  She 

[104] 


MRS.  MURCHISON 


spoke  of  them  as  if  she  felt  nothing  for  them  but 
tolerant  contempt.  Did  she  suspect  any  of  them  of 
having  killed  Murchison? 

"Kill!"  she  cried.  "I  can't  get  one  o'  them  to 
kill  a  hen  when  I  need  it.  I  have  to  get  Johnny 
Bowes,  the  butcher's  boy,  to  come  an'  do  it  for  me." 

Could  Mrs.  Murchison's  maid  have  killed  him? 

"I'd  as  soon  suspect  her,"  she  said,  "of  breaking 
into  the  Vatican  an'  killing  her  Pope." 

Young  Wallace  Bruce  was  out  of  the  reckoning 
because  he  had  gone,  that  day,  to  visit  some  school 
chums  at  the  seaside.  There  was  no  one  on  whom 
the  faintest  sort  of  plausible  suspicion  could  be 
fastened — except  Mrs.  Murchison.  She  must  be 
guilty,  unless  you  were  to  believe  that  Murchison 
himself  had  written  the  "Pray  for  me"  note  in  a 
disguised  hand,  had  gone  back  to  bed  with  his  razor 
to  cut  his  own  throat,  and  had  then  crawled  out 
again,  for  no  reason  whatever,  and  staggered  across 
the  room  to  lock  the  bathroom  door. 

For  a  time  there  was  a  suspicious  discrepancy 
between  Mrs.  Murchison's  testimony  as  to  the 
number  of  sleeping  tablets  she  had  taken  and  the 
evidence  of  the  box  containing  what  remained  of 
the  drug.  At  first  she  swore  that  she  had  taken  but 
one  tablet.  The  druggist  testified  that  he  had 
given  her  two  dozen  tablets  on  the  doctor's  pre 
scription.  There  were  only  twenty -one  tablets  left 
in  the  box.  It  was  to  account  for  this  latter  number 
that  the  prosecution  charged  her  with  rising  in  the 

[105] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

night  and  taking  the  second  dose  that  left  her 
stupefied  till  the  doctor  revived  her. 

Littlejohn  solved  the  puzzle  ingeniously.  The 
doctor's  prescription  had  not  specified  the  size  of 
the  dose.  He  had  at  first  told  her,  he  said,  to  take 
two  tablets.  Then  he  had  changed  his  mind  and 
advised  her  that  one  would  be  sufficient.  When 
Mrs.  Murchison  was  on  the  stand,  Littlejohn 
brought  out  that  she  had  been  in  doubt  about  how 
many  tablets  to  take.  She  thought  the  doctor  had 
ordered  one,  and  then  she  remembered  that  he  had 
prescribed  two.  As  she  recalled  her  hesitation,  she 
could  not  be  sure  whether  she  had  taken  one  or 
two. 

"Is  it  possible,"  Littlejohn  asked,  "that  you 
dissolved  one  in  the  water,  and  then,  on  second 
thoughts,  decided  that  you  should  take  two — and 
added  two  more,  absent-mindedly?" 

"Yes,"  she  admitted,  "that  is  possible." 

And  the  doctor  testified  that  if  she  had  taken 
three  tablets  upon  going  to  bed,  she  must  have  slept 
from  the  time  the  maid  left  her  until  he  himself  re 
vived  her  in  the  morning. 

This  became  the  strongest  point  in  Littlejohn's 
summing  up.  The  next  strongest  was  the  obvious 
one  that  she  had  no  motive  for  killing  her  husband. 
And,  finally,  there  was  no  circumstantial  evidence 
to  connect  her  with  the  crime  except  the  single  fact 
that  Murchison  had  locked  his  door  against  her  after 
he  had  been  attacked. 

[106] 


MRS.  MURCHISON 


"The  dying  man,"  Littlejohn  said,  "staggering 
around  his  room  in  the  dark,  may  have  mistaken 
his  direction  and  locked  the  wrong  door.  Or  he  may 
have  supposed  that  he  had  been  attacked  by  his 
wife  because  he  saw  his  assailant  flee  into  her  bed 
chamber.  Or,  in  the  extremity  of  his  panic,  he  may 
have  been  thoughtless  enough  to  try  to  save  him 
self  by  locking  the  murderer  in  his  wife's  room 
while  he  summoned  aid. 

"Who  was  that  murderer?  Because  all  the  doors 
and  windows  of  the  house  were  locked,  the  prosecu 
tion  contends  that  he  or  she  must  have  been  a 
member  of  the  Murchison  household.  But  he  may 
have  entered  the  house  earlier  in  the  evening,  before 
it  was  locked  up  for  the  night,  and  concealed  him 
self  till  the  servants  were  asleep.  Escaping  through 
Mrs.  Murchison's  bedroom,  he  may  have  returned 
to  his  hiding  place  and  made  off  in  the  morning 
under  cover  of  the  excitement  in  the  house,  when  the 
doors  were  opened  again.  Or,  in  a  house  so  large, 
he  may  have  had  some  unguarded  means  of  entrance 
and  egress  which  the  state  has  not  discovered. 

"It  is  plain,  from  the  terms  of  his  written  con 
fession,  that  he — or  she — was  a  religious  maniac. 
Neither  Mrs.  Murchison  nor  any  other  member  of 
the  household  can  be  suspected  of  religious  mania. 
And  if  she  wrote  the  message  in  a  disguised  hand, 
in  order  to  throw  suspicion  elsewhere,  why  did 
she  not  write  it  in  terms  that  would  accomplish  her 
end?  Why  did  she  not  sign  some  name  to  it?  Why 
8  [ 107  ] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

did  she  write  a  message  which  has  thrown  suspicion 
nowhere? 

"The  learned  counsel  for  the  prosecution  argues 
that  Mrs.  Murchison  was  the  person  who  would 
chiefly  profit  by  her  husband's  death.  But  he  has 
failed  to  show  that  she  had  any  wish  to  profit  by  it. 
He  argues  that — under  the  peculiar  circumstances 
of  her  husband's  death — she  was  the  person  who 
was  most  easily  able  to  do  away  with  him.  But 
he  has  failed  to  show  that  she  took  advantage  of 
her  opportunity.  The  wife  of  any  wealthy  man 
is  most  likely  to  profit  under  his  will;  and  she  is 
likely  to  be,  by  circumstances,  most  able  to  kill  him 
in  his  sleep.  On  such  evidence  as  the  prosecution 
has  presented  against  Mrs.  Murchison,  the  wife  of 
any  murdered  man  could  be  suspected  of  his  murder. 
It  is  not  enough.  Suspicion,  however  well  founded, 
is  not  enough. 

"It  was  for  this  reason  that  I  allowed  my  client 
to  go  on  the  witness  stand  in  her  own  defense.  It 
seemed  to  me  that  her  innocence  would  be  so  evident 
that  no  suspicion  of  her  could  endure.  For  this 
reason,  too,  I  made  no  objection  to  the  many  objec 
tionable  questions  which  the  prosecution  asked  her. 
Throughout  the  trial  I  have  made  no  attempt  to 
take  advantage  of  those  technicalities  by  means  of 
which  a  lawyer  may  so  often  protect  a  guilty  client. 
I  allowed  Mrs.  Murchison  to  be  put  through  an 
examination  so  unreasonably  merciless  that  the 
court  has  rightly  characterized  it  as  a  'third  degree.' 

[108] 


MRS.  MTJRCHISON 


I  had  no  fear  of  the  result.  I  knew  that  Mrs.  Mur- 
chison  wished  not  only  to  prove  her  own  innocence, 
but  to  give  to  the  state  every  aid  in  finding  the 
murderer,  by  answering  any  question  that  could 
throw  the  faintest  light  whatever  on  the  circum 
stances  of  the  crime." 

And  so  on. 

Long  before  he  had  finished  his  argument  it  was 
evident  that  the  jury  was  on  his  side.  He  spoke  as 
if  he  were  one  of  them,  their  foreman,  in  the  jury 
room  itself,  going  over  the  case  with  them  impar 
tially  and  trying  only  to  arrive  at  a  just  conclusion. 
And  they  listened  to  him  absorbedly,  with  reflective 
faces,  unconscious  of  everything  but  the  points  that 
he  made,  whereas  they  were  restless  while  the 
prosecutor  spoke,  listened  self-consciously,  and 
looked  at  his  hands  or  down  at  his  feet  when  he 
tried  to  hold  their  eyes  while  he  emotionalized  them 
with  his  eloquence. 

5 

Her  acquittal  was  expected,  therefore,  by  every 
one  in  the  court  room.  And  it  was  accepted  without 
question  by  everyone  outside  the  prosecution — so 
far  as  I  saw— except  Tom  McQuade.  "  She's  guilty, 
just  the  same,"  he  insisted,  coldly. 

"I  bet  you  she'd  be  acquitted,'"  Orpen  said,  "but 
I'd  bet  you  she's  innocent,  too,  if  I  knew  any  way 
to  decide  the  bet," 

"I  owe  you  a  box  of  cigars,"  McQuade  conceded, 

1109] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

"  That's  all  right.  But  if  I  can  ever  bring  you  proof 
that  she's  guilty  you'll  return  the  stakes,  will  you?" 

"Yes,  and  doubled." 

"Good."    McQuade  gathered  up  his  copy  paper. 

"Who's  to  be  referee?"  Orpen  asked.  "Who's 
to  decide  whether  or  not  your  proofs  prove 
anything?" 

"I'll  leave  it  to  you." 

"No,"  Orpen  said,  "that  wouldn't  be  fair." 

"I'll  leave  it  to  anyone  you  name." 

Orpen  nodded  toward  me.  "Leave  it  to  him, 
eh?" 

"Perfectly  satisfactory,"  McQuade  said. 

Orpen  winked  at  me.  "Is  there  anything  else  I 
can  agree  to,  Mac,  to  help  you  save  your  face?" 

McQuade  took  himself  off  without  replying. 

"The  trouble  with  Mac  is,"  Orpen  philosophized, 
"he  depends  too  much  on  facts.  I  used  to  do  it 
once,  myself,  but  I've  learned  that  in  newspaper 
work  correct  facts  aren't  as  valuable  as  correct 
impressions." 

There  was  an  old  rivalry  between  these  two  men 
— the  rivalry  of  antipathetic  temperaments.  Mc 
Quade  was  a  keen,  hard-bitten  worker  with  a  close- 
lipped  mouth  that  looked  as  if  he  gnawed  it.  He  was 
always  as  busy  as  some  instinctively  acquisitive 
animal  accumulating  facts,  acquaintances,  contacts. 
"The  things  a  newspaper  man  knows  and  doesn't 
publish  are  his  best  stock  in  trade,"  he  used  to 
say.  He  was  accurate  in  his  reports,  making  full 

Uio] 


MRS.  MURCHISON 


notes  in  shorthand  and  transcribing  them  carefully, 
writing  a  curt  style,  in  hard  little  sentences,  without 
charm. 

Orpen  was  fat,  lazy,  meditative.  He  has  made  a 
better  magazine  writer  than  he  ever  was  a  news 
paper  man,  but  he  had  one  faculty  as  a  reporter  that 
was  justly  envied — he  could  write  excellent  copy 
and  at  the  same  time  listen  to  what  was  being  said 
and  watch  what  was  going  on.  At  the  Murchison 
trial,  day  after  day,  he  started  writing  in  legible 
longhand  as  soon  as  the  court  proceedings  began, 
and  he  continued  writing,  without  making  a  short 
hand  note,  listening  to  the  examination  of  the  wit 
ness  on  the  stand  while  he  was  still  reporting  what  a 
previous  witness  had  testified.  He  used  to  say: 
"It's  just  a  trick.  You  sort  of  split  your  mind. 
You  listen  with  one  ear  while  you  write  with  the 
other."  I  have  seen  him  write  that  way  and  carry 
on  a  desultory  conversation.  He  would  have  his 
day's  work  on  the  Murchison  trial  finished  when  the 
court  adjourned — all  except  writing  the  lead  for  his 
stuff.  McQuade  would  have  to  gather  up  his  short 
hand  notes  and  hurry  away  to  write  his  story  from 
them,  in  quiet.  Orpen  twitted  him  about  it.  He 
teased  McQuade  rather  cruelly  as  a  constant 
practice. 

"Mac  needs  it,"  he  said.  "He  has  too  much  ego 
in  his  cosmos." 

It  was  undoubtedly  under  the  spur  of  Orpen' s 
teasing  that  McQuade  went  about  so  determinedly 

[in] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

to  get  his  evidence  against  Mrs.  Murchison.  How 
he  did  it  I  do  not  know,  but  he  certainly  gave  up 
his  belated  summer  holiday  to  it,  and  trailed  Mrs. 
Murchison's  past — through  the  years  of  her  married 
life  with  "Aleck"  Bruce,  the  court  stenographer, 
back  to  the  early  days  when  she  was  Mabel  Andrews 
on  a  farm  in  the  Putnam  Valley  upstate. 

He  returned  with  several  disturbing  bits  of  evi 
dence.  The  first  was  that  the  saying,  "God  is  not 
mocked,"  had  been  a  favorite  one  of  Mrs.  Murchi 
son's  mother.  This  might  be  significant,  or  it  might 
not.  The  second  was  that  as  a  girl,  before  she 
married  Bruce,  Mrs.  Murchison  had  had  little  edu 
cation;  she  had  taken  a  course  in  shorthand  and 
typewriting  in  order  to  assist  her  husband  in  his 
work,  and,  in  helping  him,  she  had  been  much  about 
the  courts.  This,  McQuade  argued,  accounted  for 
her  ability  to  take  care  of  herself  on  the  witness 
stand. 

"It  accounts  for  it,"  Orpen  pointed  out,  "if  she 
was  guilty.  If  she  was  innocent,  she  didn't  need  to 
'take  care*  of  herself." 

But  the  final  item  in  McQuade's  indictment  could 
not  be  set  aside  so  easily.  He  had  two  photographs : 
one  of  the  "God  is  not  mocked"  message  that  had 
figured  in  the  trial,  the  other  of  the  signature  of 
"Mabel  Andrews"  as  it  appeared  on  the  application 
for  her  first  marriage  license.  And  Mabel  Andrews 
had  written  her  name  on  that  application  in  an  un 
formed,  girlish  backhand  that  was  identical  with 

[112] 


MRS.  MURCHISON 


the  handwriting  of  the  message  from  the  murderer 
of  her  second  husband. 

Orpen  brought  the  evidence  to  me  as  the  referee 
between  McQuade  and  him.  "Do  you  think  this 
proves  her  guilty?" 

Whether  it  did  or  not,  it  was  a  whale  of  a  news 
paper  story.  That  was  all  I  could  see  in  it,  at  first. 

"Yes,"  Orpen  complained,  "but  it's  McQuade's 
story,  not  yours  or  mine.  Do  you  think  it  proves 
her  guilty?" 

"Mac  thinks  so,  I  suppose?" 

"Sure  of  it." 

"What  do  you  think?"  I  asked. 

"I've  a  hunch  that  Littlejohn  might  throw  some 
light  on  it." 

"We  couldn't  go  to  Littlejohn  and  put  him  wise 
to  this,  without  Mac's  permission." 

"No,"  he  said,  "but  Mac  '11  have  to  see  Littlejohn 
before  he  prints  it,  anyway.  We  might  all  three  go 
together,  if  that  suits  you." 

It  suited  me.  It  even  flattered  me.  They  were 
both  veteran  newspapermen,  and  I  was  not  much 
more  than  a  cub  reporter.  I  wanted  to  see  them  at 
work,  interviewing  Littlejohn.  I  wanted  to  be  asso 
ciated  with  them  in  getting  the  biggest  newspaper 
story  of  the  day,  as  it  seemed  to  me.  I  kept  saying 
to  myself :  "  Heavens !  What  a  story ! " 

Orpen  telephoned  me,  later,  that  McQuade  would 
come;  that  he  had  made  an  appointment  with 
Littlejohn  to  see  us  at  eleven  o'clock  next  morning; 

[113] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

that  we  were  to  meet  McQuade  at  the  door  of  the 
World  Building  at  10.45,  and  go  together  to  Little- 
John's  office. 

"Heavens!    What  a  story!" 

6 

"Well,  it  may  look  like  a  hell  of  a  good  story  to 
you,'9  Orpen  grumbled,  on  our  way  to  meet  Mc 
Quade,  "but  I  have  a  hunch  it  '11  fizzle  before  it 
gets  to  print." 

"Why?" 

"Because  that's  the  way  life  is.  Things  never 
come  up  to  specifications.  Mac  probably  suspected 
there  was  no  meat  in  his  egg  or  he  wouldn't  have 
let  us  see  it  till  he'd  hatched  it  out." 

I  suspected  that  McQuade  had  been  so  eager  to 
crow  over  Orpen  that  he  had  not  been  able  to  wait 
for  incubation.  And  certainly,  when  we  met  him, 
there  was  enough  superior  silence  in  his  manner  to 
justify  my  suspicion.  He  nodded  briefly  and  went 
along  with  us. 

"Who  does  the  talking  at  this  interview?" 
Orpen  asked. 

"You  do,  if  you  want  to." 

"I'm  going  to  tell  him  about  the  bet  and  show 
him  the  photos." 

"That's  all  right  with  me" 

"Good." 

They  did  not  speak  another  word  outside  Little- 

[114] 


MRS.  MURCHISON 


John's  office — the  old  office  of  Littlejolm,  Varley, 
McNeill  &  Littlejohn,  in  Chambers  Street.  The 
reception  room  was  a  sort  of  law  library,  and  the 
separate  offices  of  the  partners  opened  off  it.  Justin 
Littlejohn  was  reading  a  newspaper  at  a  shabby  old 
walnut  desk  when  a  clerk  ushered  us  in  to  him.  A 
fire  of  cannel  coal  was  burning  in  the  fireplace  of  a 
previous  generation,  and  the  room  was  full  of  the 
peaty  smell  of  the  smoke.  I  judged  that  Littlejohn 
was  using  his  father's  office.  Old  Martin  Littlejohn 
had  died  about  six  months  before. 

He  greeted  us  absent-mindedly  and  invited  us  to 
sit.  The  character  of  the  room,  his  air  of  abstrac 
tion,  his  distinguished  mask  of  face — and  the  gen 
eral  bagginess  of  his  clothes — made  me  feel  as  if  we 
were  interviewing  some  literary  philosopher  in  his 
workshop. 

Orpen  began  to  explain  our  coming.  He  had  a 
humorous  slow  drawl,  and  he  sat  in  his  chair  in  an 
exaggerated  attitude  of  sprawling  ease.  Littlejohn 
listened  to  him  benevolently.  McQuade  also  lis 
tened,  watching  him  as  if  he  were  interested  in 
Orpen  only.  But  I  gathered  that  Littlejohn  was  as 
aware  of  McQuade  as  McQuade  was  secretly  intent 
on  Littlejohn.  The  very  fixity  of  their  attention 
upon  Orpen  betrayed  them  to  me. 

Littlejohn  made  no  comment  except  to  say,  "Yes, 
I  remember  you  all,"  when  Orpen  explained  that 
we  had  reported  the  Murchison  trial.  Orpen  went 
on  to  tell  about  the  bet  that  he  had  made  with 

[115] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

McQuade,  and  about  the  renewal  of  that  wager 
after  Mrs.  Murchison's  acquittal.  Littlejohn  nod 
ded.  Orpen  described  rather  whimsically  Mc- 
Quade's  search  for  new  evidence,  and  in  the  same 
bantering  manner  he  laid  the  two  photographs  be 
fore  Littlejohn.  I  held  my  breath  for  the  dramatic 
climax.  Littlejohn  merely  glanced  at  the  photos, 
as  if  he  had  seen  them  before,  and  said,  "Yes?" 
inquiringly. 

"Well,"  Orpen  went  on,  undiscouraged,  "before 
I  decided  that  I'd  have  to  give  back  Mac's  cigars 
I  wanted  to  hear  what  you  had  to  say  about  that 
handwriting.  Do  I  lose  my  bet?" 

Littlejohn,  for  answer,  turned  slowly  to  Mc 
Quade.  "What  made  you  think  she  was  guilty?" 

"The  evidence  in  the  case." 

"Oh."  He  seemed  disappointed.  He  looked  down 
at  his  blotter  a  moment.  "It  was  you  that  inter 
viewed  the  mother  about  a  month  ago,  was  it?" 

"Yes." 

Littlejohn  smiled  at  Orpen  confidentially.  "We 
thought  it  was  a  state  detective.  We  wondered 
whether  they  were  trying  to  fasten  the  crime  on 
Mrs.  Andrews." 

Orpen  chuckled. 

There  was  a  busy  and  significant  silence. 

Littlejohn  tilted  back  in  his  swivel  chair  and 
clasped  his  hands  behind  his  head. 

"Well,  gentlemen,"  he  said,  putting  aside  the 
whole  story  of  the  bet  as  if  it  were  a  subterfuge  we 

[116] 


MRS.  MTJRCHISON 


had  invented,  "my  client  has  been  acquitted,  and 
a  person  cannot  be  tried  twice  for  the  same  crime. 
The  case  cannot  be  reopened." 

"We  know  that,"  McQuade  put  in. 

"So  if  you  publish  these  photographs  you  will 
merely  redirect  suspicion  against  a  woman  who  will 
be  unable  to  clear  herself — since  nothing  that  she 
can  say  will  be  under  oath — and  no  decision  on  her 
defense  will  be  judicial." 

"If  you  can  give  me  any  innocent  explanation  of 
those  photographs,"  McQuade  said,  "I'll  not  pub 
lish  them." 

Littlejohn,  with  his  head  thrown  back,  looked 
down  his  nose  at  McQuade.  Then  he  unclasped  his 
hands,  dropped  forward  in  his  chair,  and  challenged 
Orpen  with  an  interrogating  eye. 

"It's  McQuade's  story,  not  ours,"  Orpen  ex 
plained.  "We  can't  print  it  until  after  he  does." 

Littlejohn's  expression  did  not  change. 

"Oh!"  Orpen  said.  "If  you  want  our  prom 
ise Yes.  I  promise." 

I  added  mine,  in  reply  to  a  glance  from  Littlejohn. 

"Wrell,"  he  said,  at  last,  "I  don't  know  the  truth 
about  the  case,  but  I  can  tell  you  my  theory.  She 
killed  him  in  her  sleep." 

We  all  sat  up  together.    "In  her  sleep!" 

"Yes.  She  probably  took  one  of  those  tablets 
when  she  went  to  bed.  The  effects  of  it,  I  should 
say,  wore  off  in  the  night,  but  left  her  half  drugged 
and  in  what,  I  believe,  is  called  'a  hypnagogic 

[117] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

state.'  In  that  condition  she  went  to  the  bathroom 
to  take  another  dose  of  the  stuff,  found  her  hus 
band's  razor  on  the  shelf,  wrote  that  message  on  the 
dresser,  cut  his  throat,  went  back  to  the  bathroom, 
took  two  more  tablets,  and  fell  asleep  without  any 
consciousness  whatever  of  what  she  had  done." 

It  was  McQuade  who  broke  the  staring  silence  to 
ask,  "Why  didn't  you  offer  that  theory  at  the  trial?" 

"Because  I  was  doubtful  whether  a  country  jury 
would  believe  it.  I  considered  that  Mrs.  Murchison 
was  morally  innocent  of  her  husband's  death.  She 
was  entirely  convinced  of  her  own  innocence.  She 
had  no  recollection  of  what  she  had  done  in  her 
sleep — if  she  had  really  done  it — and  I  was  afraid 
that  if  I  suggested  this  sleepwalking  theory  to  her, 
some  memory  of  what  had  happened  might  return 
to  her,  perhaps  in  the  form  of  something  that  she 
had  dreamed.  So  I  pretended  to  her  that  I  believed 
Murchison  had  been  killed  by  a  religious  maniac 
who  had  got  into  the  house  in  some  way  that  was 
not  known;  and  I  put  her  on  the  stand  in  her  own 
defense  and  let  her  win  her  case  in  her  own  way. 
And  I  think  the  verdict  shows  that  I  was  right." 

"How  do  you  account  for  the  handwriting?" 
McQuade  pursued  him. 

Littlejohn  reflected.  "I  don't  know  how  to  ac 
count  for  it,"  he  admitted,  "except  in  this  way: 
Mrs.  Murchison  must  have  begun  writing  her 
present  hand  after  she  married  that  court  stenog 
rapher.  Probably  her  earlier  handwriting  was  too 

[118] 


MRS.  MURCHISON 


illegible  for  him  and  he  made  her  learn  this  pro 
fessional  script.  You  know  she  used  to  help  him 
in  his  work?  And  in  her  sleep  she  must  have  re 
turned  to  her  schoolgirl  writing." 

"Yes,"  McQuade  conceded.  "That  would  ex 
plain  it." 

"Well,  anyway,  I  win  my  bet,"  Orpen  said. 
"She  was  innocent." 

"She  killed  him,"  McQuade  insisted. 

"That's  my  theory,"  Littlejohn  explained.  "I 
may  be  wrong.  But  I'm  not  wrong  about  this; 
she's  an  innocent  woman.  As  her  counsel,  she  could 
not  have  deceived  me.  She  didn't  know  she  had 
killed  him,  if  she  did  it.  And  if  you  publish  those 
photos  you'll  wreck  what  is  left  of  a  maimed  life 
and  mark  her  and  her  son  with  a  suspicion  they  will 
never  escape  from.  It's  a  damnable  thing  to  do. 
And  it's  a  damned  dangerous  thing  for  your  editor 
to  do,  since  she  has  the  decision  of  a  court  declaring 
her  innocent,  and  the  law  will  uphold  her." 

McQuade  met  the  implied  threat  with  indif 
ference.  "Had  she  any  motive  for  killing  him — 
anything  that  would  impel  her  to  do  it,  in  her  sleep?" 

"I  don't  know,"  Littlejohn  said.  "I  didn't  dare 
ask  her,  for  fear  of  starting  the  suspicion  in  her  mind 
that  she  had  done  it." 

McQuade  got  up.  "I  think  you're  right,"  he 
said.  "She  killed  him,  undoubtedly.  But  either 
she  didn't  know  it  or  she  was  the  most  amazing 
actress  that  ever  went  on  the  witness  stand.  I 

[119] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

accept  your  theory  that  she  did  it  in  her  sleep." 
He  turned  to  Orpen.  "You  win."  He  took  up  his 
hat.  "You  may  have  those  photos  if  you  want  them, 
Mr.  Littlejohn.  I'll  not  write  the  story.  No  one 
would  believe  the  sleepwalking  theory,  and  I  don't 
wish  to  accuse  her  of  the  alternative." 

This  decision  came  as  an  incredible  conclusion  to 
me.  At  first  I  thought  that  McQuade  was  merely 
putting  Littlejohn  off  his  guard;  that  Mac  had 
duplicates  of  the  photographs  and  intended  to  print 
them  if  he  could  find  any  further  evidence  to  support 
them.  I  did  not  understand  him  then  as  well  as  I 
did  later.  He  was  unscrupulous  about  the  way  he 
acquired  information,  but  he  was  most  scrupulous 
in  the  way  he  used  it.  And  he  was  putting  Little 
john  under  an  obligation — an  obligation  that  would 
probably  pay  a  high  rate  of  interest  as  time  went  on. 

Littlejohn  shook  hands  with  him.  He  shook 
hands  with  us  all,  saying  good-by.  But  he  took 
McQuade's  hand  with  a  manner  that  gave,  as  well 
as  accepted,  a  promise.  And  I  understood  Mac's 
saying,  "The  things  a  newspaper  man  knows  and 
doesn't  publish  are  his  best  stock  in  trade." 

His  wisdom  in  not  publishing  the  sleepwalking 
theory  was  vindicated  when  it  leaked  into  the 
gossip  of  the  editorial  offices.  It  never  found  its 
way  into  print,  so  far  as  I  know.  And  the  Murchi- 
son  murder — no  matter  what  theory  about  it  might 
be  invented — had  soon  no  more  news  value  than 
last  week's  stock  quotations. 

H«o] 


MRS.  MURCHISON 


It  never  occurred  to  me  that  Littlejohn  had  de 
ceived  and  outwitted  us.  And  I  am  sure  it  never 
occurred  to  Orpen  or  McQuade. 


It  did  not  occur  to  me  till  more  than  ten  years 
later,  when  I  learned  the  whole  truth  about  Mrs. 
Murchison  from  Littlejohn  himself. 

I  had  not  seen  him  at  all,  in  the  meanwhile — 
having  given  up  newspaper  work — and  all  I  knew 
of  him,  after  the  Murchison  trial,  I  gathered  from 
the  newspapers.  I  read  a  special  article  about  him 
in  the  Sunday  World,  written,  undoubtedly,  by 
McQuade.  And  Orpen  had  a  beautiful  blurb  about 
him  in  Success.  The  editorial  comment,  after  the 
acquittal  of  Mrs.  Deeming,  admiringly  accused  him 
of  being  "almost  a  menace  to  the  administration  of 
justice,"  because  it  had  become  "practically  impos 
sible  to  convict  anyone  whom  he  defends."  But  the 
a3ministration  of  justice  got  over  the  difficulty  by 
retaining  him  as  special  counsel  wherever  that  was 
possible,  and  the  social  system  was  more  or  less  saved. 

I  did  not  doubt  his  ability,  but  I  am  afraid  I 
believed  that  his  reputation  had  been  more  than 
helped  by  McQuade  and  Orpen  and  the  newspaper 
reporters.  He  seemed  to  know  how  to  handle  them. 
As  far  as  I  thought  of  him  at  all,  I  suspected  him  of 
having  the  sort  of  "bubble  reputation"  that  is 
blown  up  by  press  puffery. 

1 121 1 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

And  then  I  walked  into  the  smoking  room  of  the 
Atlantic  liner  Rotterdam  one  wet  morning  in  the 
summer  of  1913 — two  days  out  of  New  York — and 
saw  Littlejohn  sitting  at  a  card  table,  smoking  an 
old  green-cob  pipe,  and  playing  Canfield.  He  had 
aged.  He  was  balder.  He  looked  more  of  a  per 
sonage  than  ever.  But  there  was  no  mistaking  him, 
and  I  must  have  stared  at  him,  for  he  nodded  when 
he  looked  up  from  his  cards  and  caught  my  eye; 
and  he  said,  "Good  morning,"  affably,  and  stretched 
out  his  hand  as  I  approached. 

I  was  flattered  that  he  remembered  me.  Before 
the  voyage  was  over  I  understood  that  he  had  not 
remembered  me  at  all.  He  spoke  to  anybody  who 
looked  at  him  twice.  And  he  would  talk  to  any 
body — man,  woman,  or  child — who  stayed  beside 
him  long  enough  to  make  a  conversation  possible. 
I  never  knew  a  man  who  stood  less  upon  the  formal 
ity  of  an  introduction. 

He  began  talking  at  once  about  solitaire — ex 
plaining,  with  a  judicial  twinkle,  that  he  liked  to 
play  it  "because  the  moral  law  doesn't  run  against 
cheating  in  solitaire."  And  he  went  on  abusing  the 
moral  law  because  of  the  trouble  it  gave  him. 

"I'm  as  tired  of  it  as  a  doctor  must  get  of  disease. 
I  can  cheat  myself  at  solitaire  and  no  one  can  quote 
the  statutes  against  me." 

I  supposed  he  must  be  pretty  well  fed  up  with 
the  statutes — or  words  to  that  effect. 

"Hate    them,"    he   complained    into   his    pipe. 

[122] 


MRS.  MTJRCHISON 


'  '  Hate  prosecuting  people.    We  punish  them  because 
we  don't  understand  them." 

He  played  his  cards  a  moment  in  silence,  but  with 
a  receptive  expression  of  attention  lingering  in  my 
direction.  I  offered  something  about  not  having 
seen  him  since  I  had  interviewed  him  in  his  office 
with  Orpen  and  McQuade. 

" Thanks  for  telling  me,"  he  said.  "I  knew  I'd 
met  you  somewhere.  Haven't  seen  you  about 
lately,  have  I?" 

I  explained  what  had  become  of  me.  He  dropped 
his  game  and  gave  himself  up  wholly  to  me  and  his 
pipe.  When  the  pipe  went  out  he  lit  a  cigar.  After 
the  cigar  he  produced  cigarettes.  And  all  the  time 
he  asked  questions,  made  philosophic  comments, 
offered  his  own  experiences  to  parallel  mine,  and 
appeared  as  interested  as  he  was  interesting.  I 
could  no  more  resist  him  than  a  bug  could  resist  an 
entomologist — a  genial  Henri  Fabre  who  knew  more 
about  my  species  than  I  knew  myself — for,  after 
his  first  few  questions  I  got  the  feeling  that  he  had 
some  sort  of  secret  diagram  of  me  which  he  was 
verifying  to  himself.  He  was  interested  in  my 
opinions,  but  only  in  so  far  as  he  could  trace  them 
back  to  their  temperamental  origins.  He  was  much 
less  interested  in  my  adult  experiences  than  in  my 
childish  ones.  He  led  me  to  talk  about  my  parents — 
by  talking  about  his.  Our  conversation  descended 
to  the  most  astonishing  intimacies  before  we  sep 
arated  for  luncheon. 

9  [  123 1 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

By  that  time  my  curiosity  was  so  piqued  that  he 
could  not  have  avoided  me  if  he  had  tried.  He  did 
not  try.  It  appeared  that  he  had  some  vague  plan 
of  one  day  writing  a  book,  and  he  was  eager  to 
discuss  the  practice  of  letters.  I  supposed  that  he 
planned  a  volume  on  the  law.  By  no  means.  He 
was  not  interested  in  the  law.  He  wanted  to  do  a 
book  on  psychology — practical  psychology — about 
the  origin  of  character  and  the  derivation  of  motive. 

In  my  excitement  I  almost  caught  him  by  the 
collar.  As  a  professing  fictionist,  a  practical  theory 
of  human  character  and  motive  was  as  breath- 
catching  to  me  as  the  promise  of  the  long-sought 
philosopher's  stone  to  an  alchemist.  Did  he  really 
know  anything  about  that  sort  of  psychology? 

Most  emphatically  he  did.  And  as  he  discussed 
it  I  began  to  understand  his  success  as  a  criminal 
lawyer.  He  had  found  out  a  secret  of  the  human 
mind  by  virtue  of  which  he  understood  people 
better  than  they  understood  themselves.  That 
knowledge  had  made  it  possible  for  him  to  influence 
juries  uncannily.  It  had  made  it  practically  im 
possible  for  a  criminal  to  deceive  or  evade  him. 
It  had  made  him,  as  the  newspapers  said,  "almost 
a  menace  to  the  administration  of  justice"  until 
justice  retained  him  on  its  side.  And  it  certainly 
made  him  the  most  interesting  human  being  I  had 
ever  met. 

This  is  hardly  the  place  to  attempt  an  exposition 
of  his  theory.  One  would  need  to  write  a  book 

[124] 


MRS.  MURCHISON 


about  it  in  order  to  give  it  worthily.  All  I  wish  to 
do,  here,  is  to  explain  Mrs.  Murchison  as  he  ex 
plained  her,  inasmuch  as  her  death  and  the  death 
of  her  son  have  made  it  possible  to  tell  the  truth 
about  her. 

"It  was  the  Murchison  case,"  Littlejohn  said, 
"that  crystallized  the  whole  thing  for  me.  You 
watched  that  case?  Well,  let  me  tell  you  what  was 
behind  it." 

8 

Mabel  Andrews  Bruce  Murchison  was  the  daugh 
ter  of  Jonathan  Andrews  and  Euphemia  Cory 
Andrews,  devout  upstate  farmers  of  a  Revolutionary 
stock  that  had  gone  poor  both  in  blood  and  in 
substance.  Her  early  life  had  been  narrow,  puri 
tanic,  repressed.  Her  mother  was  an  overworked 
farmer's  wife,  doing  her  duty  by  her  God,  her 
husband,  and  her  house,  implacably.  If  she  ever 
felt  any  tenderness  of  affection  for  her  daughter, 
she  never  let  it  soften  her  stern  Old  Testament 
attitude  of  disapprobation  of  young  female  flesh 
and  its  frailties  as  these  were  incarnated  in  her 
offspring.  Consequently,  whatever  love  the  girl 
had,  it  was  for  her  father.  "You  could  guess  that 
from  her  voice,"  Littlejohn  said. 

"How  from  her  voice?"  I  asked.  "What  do  you 
mean?" 

"Well,  it  may  not  be  universal,"  he  replied,  "but 
I  find  that  women  with  those  deep  contralto  voices 

1125] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

have  usually  imitated  them  from  the  father.  What 
you  love  in  your  childhood,  you  imitate.  That  is 
the  way  character  is  formed  in  youth." 

The  father,  however,  was  little  more  demonstra 
tive  than  his  wife.  The  girl  loved  and  worshiped 
him,  but  with  a  quite  religious  reverence.  "Un 
doubtedly,"  Littlejohn  said,  "he  was  her  first  con 
ception  of  God.  I  mean  that  literally.  In  the  child 
mind,  before  the  intelligence  develops,  the  parent 
is  God.  I  want  you  to  remember  that.  It  is  one 
of  the  keys  to  Mrs.  Murchison." 

Her  career  as  a  murderess  began  when  she  fell 
in  love  with  a  schoolmate,  Aleck  Bruce,  the  son  of 
the  village  atheist.  The  father  was  a  lawyer,  a 
drunkarcj,  and  generally  a  "horrible  example"  to 
the  Andrews  household.  "There  was  nothing 
against  the  boy,  personally,"  Littlejohn  explained, 
"except  that  he  was  the  son  of  his  father  and 
shared  in  his  father's  religious  heresies."  The  girl's 
parents  were  unaware  of  her  infatuation  for  him 
until  he  left  home  to  work  as  a  stenographer  in 
New  York  City  and  letters  from  him  began  to  arrive 
at  the  farmhouse.  Then  there  was  a  terrific  scene. 
The  silent  girl  would  not  agree  to  give  him  up. 
She  would  not  tell  her  parents  how  far  her  love 
affair  had  gone.  She  would  answer  no  questions, 
offer  no  explanations,  make  no  promises. 

"For  my  purpose,"  said  Littlejohn,  "the  impor 
tant  thing  about  that  scene  was  this :  her  father,  in 
an  attempt  to  work  on  her  affection  for  him, 

[  1*6 ) 


MRS.  MURCHISON 


threatened,  repeatedly,  'If  you  marry  that  boy,  it 
will  kill  me.'  And  when  she  ran  away  with  Bruce, 
and  her  father  subsequently  died — although  there 
was  no  connection  whatever  between  the  two  events 
— her  mother  wrote  to  her:  'You  have  killed  your 
father.  God  is  not  mocked.' "  »  -  _ 

This  message,  of  course,  had  no  effect  of  remorse 
on  the  girl.  She  knew  she  had  not  killed  her  father. 
And  she  had  already  escaped  from  her  religious  fears 
into  the  more  liberal  philosophy  of  life  which  her 
husband  followed.  They  were  happy  together. 
Their  child  was  born.  She  studied  shorthand  and 
typewriting  to  help  Bruce  in  his  work,  and  when  he 
developed  tuberculosis  she  sent  him  to  a  sanitarium 
in  the  Catskills,  took  her  child  back  to  her  mother 
on  the  farm,  and  went  to  work  in  New  York  to 
support  both  husband  and  child. 

"The  significant  thing  here,"  said  Littlejohn, 
"is  the  mother  again.  As  soon  as  she  heard  that 
Bruce  was  consumptive  she  accepted  it  as  a  punish 
ment  which  God  had  visited  upon  her  daughter. 
'God  is  not  mocked.'  And  when  Bruce  died,  the 
moral  was  more  pointed  than  ever.  'God  is  not 
mocked.'  And  when  she  realized  that  her  daughter 
no  longer  believed  in  such  interpositions  of  Provi 
dence,  she  still  used  the  phrase  as  a  warning  of 
future  calamities  that  were  sure  to  befall  the  infidel. 
'God  is  not  mocked."' 

"Mrs.  Bruce  was  too  sensible  to  pay  much  atten 
tion  to  these  predictions.  She  went  about  her 

[127] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

business  as  a  typist  and  stenographer,  and  tried  to 
save  enough  money  to  take  her  boy  away  from  his 
grandmother.  She  knew  that  his  youth  would  be 
ruined,  as  her  own  had  been,  if  she  left  him  on  the 
farm.  Naturally,  out  of  her  small  salary  she  was 
unable  to  save  enough  to  give  him  the  care  and  the 
food  and  the  education  and  the  outdoor  exercise 
that  he  needed.  He  was  sickly.  So  when  Murchison 
proposed  to  her  she  accepted  him.  And  all  her 
problems  seemed  to  be  solved." 

Littlejohn  turned  to  me  suddenly.  "Did  you  ever 
hypnotize  anyone?" 

"No,"  I  said.    "Did  you?" 

He  nodded.  "I've  been  dabbling  in  it  for  years, 
privately,  without  really  knowing  what  I  was 
doing." 

"Did  you  hypnotize  Mrs.  Murchison?" 

He  did  not  answer  me.  "You  don't  really  do  it," 
he  said.  "They  do  it  themselves.  You  merely 
make  the  suggestion.  You  tell  them  that  they're 
sleepy,  for  instance,  and  they  seem  to  fall  asleep. 
They  don't  actually  sleep.  They  can  hear  what  you 
say  and  they  can  answer  you.  And  they'll  do  what 
you  tell  them  to — up  to  a  certain  point.  But  if  you 
tell  them  to  do  something  they  particularly  don't 
want  to  do,  they'll  wake  up." 

"Well?" 

"Well,"  he  said,  "here's  what  I'm  driving  at. 
The  human  mind  seems  to  be  in  layers.  The  top 
layer  is  this  intelligent  mind  that  you  and  I  are 

[  1281 


MRS.  MURCHISON 


talking  to  each  other  with.  That's  the  mind  that 
goes  to  sleep.  The  next  layer  is  the  mind  that 
dreams  when  you  sleep.  That's  the  layer  that  you 
reach  when  you  hypnotize  a  person." 

"And  Mrs.  Murchison?" 

"In  my  second  interview  with  her,  before  she  was 
arrested,  I  saw  that  she  was  on  the  verge  of  a  nervous 
collapse.  She  had  not  slept  for  some  time.  She  had 
had  insomnia  before  the  murder,  and  it  had  become 
worse  since  the  murder.  That  meant  two  things  to 
me.  First  that  she  might  be  easily  hypnotized, 
because  her  intelligent  mind  would  be  exhausted  for 
lack  of  rest;  and  second  that  there  must  be  some 
thing  seriously  wrong  in  her  second  layer  of  mind, 
to  prevent  her  from  sleeping.  That's  the  usual  cause 
of  insomnia,  I  find." 

"I  see.    So?" 

"So  I  hypnotized  her." 

"How?" 

"Why,  I  simply  got  her  to  make  herself  com 
fortable  in  an  easy -chair,  and  told  her  to  relax  and 
rest  herself  a  moment,  and  assured  her  that  there 
was  no  need  to  worry,  that  I  would  take  care  of  her 
case,  and  talked  in  a  soothing  voice  for  a  while; 
and  when  she  began  to  look  drowsy  I  said:  'You're 
feeling  sleepy.  If  you'll  just  close  your  eyes  and 

rest' And  she  said:  *I  can't  rest,  Doctor. 

I'm  afraid  I'm  going  insane.' " 

"'Doctor'?" 

"Yes.    She  was  half  asleep  already." 

[129] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

"Why  was  she  afraid  she  was  going  insane?" 

"I  found  that  out  later.  Some  time  before,  she 
had  seen  her  husband  shaving,  and  she'd  had  an 
almost  ungovernable  impulse  to  jog  his  elbow  so 
as  to  make  him  cut  his  throat." 

"Good  heavens!" 

"And,  of  course,  the  impulse  was  so  inexplicable 
to  her  that  she  thought  she  must  be  going  mad." 

"Of  course.    And  then?" 

"Why,  as  soon  as  she  said  'Doctor'  I  went  to 
her  and  put  my  hand  on  her  forehead,  and  over  her 
eyes  so  as  to  close  them,  and  I  said:  'No.  You're 
quite  sane.  You  have  no  brain  trouble  at  all.  None 
at  all.  But  you're  sleepy.  Very  sleepy/  And  I 
began  to  stroke  her  forehead.  She  relaxed  so  sud 
denly  it  was  as  if  I  had  cut  the  string  that  held  her 
up.  And  then  she  began  to  tell  me." 

"About  the  murder?" 

"Well,  I  thought  she  was  talking  about  a  dream 
— a  dream  in  which  she  went  to  the  bathroom  to 
get  some  medicine,  and  when  she  lit  the  bathroom 
light  she  saw  her  husband's  razor  lying,  open,  on 
the  bathroom  shelf.  The  door  of  his  bedroom  was 
ajar.  She  stood  in  that  doorway,  with  the  razor  in 
her  hand,  and  pushed  the  door  open  till  the  bath 
room  light  just  showed  his  head  and  shoulders 
where  he  lay  in  bed.  He  was  on  his  back,  with  his 
face  turned  away  from  her,  his  throat  exposed.  She 
walked  in,  wrote  something  on  an  envelope,  drew 
the  razor  blade  across  his  throat,  returned  to  the 

[130] 


MRS.  MURCHISON 


bathroom,  took  her  medicine,  and  went  back  to 
bed." 

"Do  you  mean  she  told  you  this  as  a  dream?" 

"That's  what  it  sounded  like." 

"What  did  you  do?" 

"I  said:  'Go  to  sleep — deeper.  Go  deeper.'  She 
sank  into  a  heavy,  hypnotized  stupor,  breathing 
stertorously.  And  I  sat  down  at  my  desk  and  had  a 
sort  of  chill." 

"I  should  think  you  might!" 

He  leaned  forward,  pointing  with  a  gesture  to 
the  vague  blackness  of  the  ocean  heaving  slowly  in 
the  twilight.  "I  felt  as  you  might  feel  if  that  water 
suddenly  opened  and  showed  you  the  depths  under 
it."  We  were  sitting  in  deck  chairs,  away  from 
everybody,  talking  in  low  voices.  "And,  believe 
me,"  he  said,  "the  human  mind's  as  deep  as  that — 
every  bit — and  as  unexplored.  On  the  surface,  she 
didn't  know  she  had  killed  Murchison.  She  hadn't  a 
suspicion  of  it.  She  was  innocent.  But  just  below  the 
surface,  she  knew  that  she  had  killed  him  as  if  in  a 
dream — although  she  didn't  remember  that  dream." 

"How  do  you  know  she  didn't?" 

"I'd  stake  my  life  on  it." 

"Well?" 

"Well,  I  took  her  down  deeper.  I  wanted  to 
know  why  she  had  killed  him." 

"Yes?" 

"And  there  I  found  that  she  hadn't  killed  Mur 
chison,  at  all.  She  had  killed  her  father." 

1131] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

"Her  father?" 

"Yes.  She  had  killed  her  father — in  the  person 
of  Murchison — because  she  wanted  to  be  rid  of  him 
so  as  to  be  alone  with  Aleck  Bruce — in  the  person 
of  his  son,  Wallace." 

"I  don't  understand." 

"She  had  merely  repeated  the  tragedy  of  her 
girlhood.  Murchison  was  serving  as  her  father. 
The  boy  was  substituting  for  her  sweetheart.  She 
had  killed  Murchison  so  as  to  be  free  to  give  all  her 
love  to  the  boy,  just  as  she  had  killed  her  father  to 
go  to  her  lover." 

"But  she  never  killed  her  father!" 

"Not  to  the  intelligent  mind,  no.  But  this  had 
gone  on,  deeper  down.  And  down  there,  in  her 
childish  mind,  her  mother  had  told  her  she  killed 
her  father  and  she  believed  it.  Moreover,  she  had 
killed  her  God.  She  had  abandoned  her  church  and 
all  her  early  religious  beliefs.  And  when  she  spoke 
from  that  depth  in  her  mind,  you  couldn't  tell 
whether  she  was  talking  of  her  father,  or  the  God  of 
her  childhood,  or  Murchison.  They  were  all  the 
one  person — just  as  her  son  Wallace  and  his  father, 
Aleck  Bruce,  were  one  person." 

"Great  Scott!"  I  said.  "That's  why  she 
referred  to  Murchison  as  her  father,  at  the  trial!" 

"Exactly.  And  that's  why  she  had  the  crazy 
impulse  to  jog  Murchison's  elbow  when  he  was 
shaving — an  impulse  so  without  reasonable  motive 
that  it  made  her  think  she  must  be  going  crazy." 

f  1321 


MRS.  MURCHISON 


"And  she  didn't  know  anything  of  all  this?" 

"Not  a  thing.  Murchison  had  been  behaving 
unpleasantly  to  the  boy,  and  that  had  depressed  her 
out  of  all  proportion,  but  she  did  not  know  why. 
She  didn't  know  anything  of  what  had  happened — 
nor  why  it  had  happened." 

"Then  do  you  mean  that  she  went  temporarily 
insane  and  killed  Murchison?  Or  do  you  mean  that 
she  did  it  in  her  sleep?" 

He  leaned  back  and  spread  his  hands.  "There 
you  are!  What  is  insanity?  What  is  sleep?  Under 
your  upper  mind  layer  of  intelligence  is  this  layer 
of  an  earlier,  childish  mind — uncivilized,  primitive. 
It  is  this  mind  that  commits  crimes,  half  the  time. 
It  commits  the  crimes,  in  my  experience,  even  when 
the  intelligent  mind  actually  carries  them  out. 
In  Mrs.  Murchison's  case,  there  was  no  connection 
between  the  two  minds.  But  I  have  seen  other 
cases  in  which  the  two  minds  worked  together,  so 
that  the  intelligent  mind  watched  the  other  one 
write  the  message  and  cut  the  throat — without 
being  able  to  interfere.  That  is  why  our  method  of 
prosecuting  criminals  is  as  foolish  as  our  ancestors' 
way  of  punishing  the  insane." 

"But  good  heavens!"  I  protested,  "do  you  mean 
that  we're  all  at  the  mercy  of  this  sort  of  thing? — 
that  anyone,  at  any  time,  may  be  taken  possession 
of " 

He  stopped  me  with  a  hand  on  my  arm.  "Lis 
ten,"  he  said,  slowly,  in  a  low  tone,  "but  don't 

[188] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

repeat  this.  I  don't  want  people  to  think  I'm 
crazy.  Underneath  all  these  layers,  deeper  down, 
there's  something  else.  Before  I  brought  Mrs. 
Murchison  out  of  her  trance  I  tapped  it  in  her — 
something  deeper  down  that  seemed  to  know  what 
she  had  done,  and  how  she  had  done  it,  and  to  know 
that  she  was  innocent,  and  to  want  her  saved.  It 
acted  that  way.  It  acted  like  some  one  else  speaking 
to  me  through  all  that  confused  mass  of  disjointed 
stuff  that  came  to  me."  He  whispered  it  finally, 
"A  soul." 

And  before  I  could  speak  he  rose  and  walked 
away,  quietly,  in  the  darkness. 

9 

I  did  not  see  him  again  that  evening,  and  we  ran 
into  rough  weather  that  night,  and  I  did  not  see 
anyone  outside  of  my  stateroom  for  three  days. 
When  I  was  well  enough  to  crawl  upstairs  to  a  deck 
chair  my  interest  in  psychology  was  not  very  robust, 
and  Littlejohn  was  busy  with  some  new  acquaint 
ances.  He  sat  with  me  one  afternoon  and  discussed 
the  secondary  mind  layer  as  the  sole  seat  of  char 
acter  and  the  source  of  all  motive,  narrating  illus 
trative  examples  from  his  experience.  I  felt  as  if 
all  my  mind  layers  had  been  softly  churned  together 
into  one  faintly  sickish  instability,  and  I  decided  to 
postpone  psychology  until  I  got  something  solid 
under  my  brain  base.  I  was  going  to  Boulogne-sur- 

[134] 


MRS.  MURCHISON 


Mer,  with  an  assignment  to  work  in  Paris.  He  was 
leaving  us  at  some  English  port  of  call.  We  agreed 
to  look  each  other  up  in  New  York. 

The  war  intervened,  and  I  did  not  see  him  again 
till  I  ran  into  him,  crossing  Lafayette  Park  in  Wash 
ington,  in  December,  1917.  He  was  doing  war 
work  with  the  Department  of  Justice  and  he  looked 
worn  out. 

"I've  exhausted  myself  chewing  gum,"  he  replied 
to  some  alarmed  comment  of  mine.  "I'm  trying  to 
cut  down  my  smoking.  What  are  you  doing  here?  " 

I  told  him. 

"Oh,  damn  the  Kaiser ! "  he  said.  "You're  worse 
off  than  I  am.  If  there's  anyone  in  the  country  has 
a  kick,  he  swings  it  into  you  people.  Come  up  and 
chew  with  me  some  day — gum." 

I  promised  to.  He  waved  a  genial  good-by  and 
made  off  through  the  winter  slush.  I  had  forgotten 
to  ask  him  whether  he  had  written  his  book  on 
psychology.  I  decided  to  look  him  up  during  the 
holiday  season,  if  there  was  to  be  any  holiday  season 
that  year  in  Washington;  but  on  December  22d  I 
heard  that  he  had  broken  down  from  overwork  and 
gone  to  a  sanitarium.  The  last  word  I  had  of  him 
he  was  an  invalid  in  the  south  of  France,  and  no  one 
seemed  to  know  anything  about  his  book. 


IV.  WARDEN  JUPP 

"He  has  been  warden  since  1896,  and  his  record 
is  one  of  orderly,  efficient,  fearless  and  aggres 
sively  honest  service.    He  is  a  remarkable  man." 
— Lincoln  Steffens,  McClure's  Magazine. 


IF  you  were  to  say  that  Warden  Jupp  was  the  most 
fascinating  man  you  ever  knew,  you  might  be 
telling  the  truth,  but  you  would  never  be  able  fo 
prove  it.  People  would  expect  to  hear  that  he  was 
something  superlatively  brilliant,  unusual,  pic 
turesque.  And  he  had  none  of  these  qualities.  He 
was  as  commonplace  as  sunshine,  and  as  miraculous. 
His  mystery  lay  in  the  inscrutability  of  the  com 
pletely  simple.  He  was  like  one  of  those  master 
pieces  of  art  that  seem  to  have  occurred  as  a  perfect 
whole,  without  the  intervention  of  any  artistic 
process. 

I  am  speaking  of  his  personality,  you  understand, 
not  of  his  appearance — although  his  appearance 
was  inscrutable  enough.  He  was  a  small,  elderly, 
fat  man,  bald,  rotund,  and  thoughtfully  silent.  He 
was  shaped  somewhat  like  Mr.  Pickwick — in  mod 
ern,  ready-made  clothes — but  more  like  a  duck's 
egg.  And  you  would  have  said  that  he  held  as  little 
possibility  of  surprise  and  eccentricity  in  him  as  a 

[136] 


WARDEN  JUPP 


duck's  egg.  The  only  superficial  characteristic  that 
I  could  find  peculiar  about  him  was  the  fact  that 
even  in  the  hottest  weather  he  wore,  on  top  of  his 
little  round  face,  a  little  round  derby.  He  never,  it 
seemed,  wore  a  straw  hat. 

This  was  hardly  enough  to  have  come  a  thousand 
miles  to  discover,  although  it  proved  in  the  end  to 
be  significant. 


The  magazine  that  had  sent  me  was  interested, 
of  course,  in  Warden  Jupp's  work;  but  the  editor 
believed  that  his  readers  were  interested  more  in  the 
personalities  of  the  conspicuous  than  in  their 
achievements;  I  was  supposed  to  do  a  sort  of  "soul 
portrait"  of  Jupp,  using  his  work  merely  as  a  back 
ground  —  the  man  in  his  milieu,  but  the  man  more 
than  the  milieu  —  and  the  trouble  was  that  Jupp  ap 
peared  to  have  no  more  expressiveness  outside  of 
his  work  than  a  mechanical  piano  has  outside  of  its 
playing. 

I  carried  Lincoln  Steffens's  published  article  on 
Jupp  to  help  me,  but  after  meeting  Jupp  I  judged 
that  Steffens  had  been  perhaps  as  much  baffled  as 
I  was.  Certainly  he  had  made  no  attempt  to  dissect 
Jupp.  He  had  had  a  less  surgical  assignment,  how 
ever.  He  had  come  to  the  little  Middle  Western 
town  while  he  was  investigating  the  political  condi 
tions  of  the  state  (for  McClure's  Magazine)  and  he 
had  been  able  to  "do"  Jupp  as  a  reform  warden  who 

[137] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

had  defeated  the  prison  ring  of  political  grafters, 
broken  their  power  to  exploit  the  helpless  convicts, 
and  made  the  penitentiary  a  little  model  of  what  a 
salutary  purgatory — rather  than  what  a  hopeless 
hell — a  modern  prison  might  be.  Steffens  had  dis 
covered  Jupp,  as  he  discovered  many  other  social 
exemplars  in  America.  He  had  told  Jupp's  story  so 
successfully  that  there  was  no  need  for  any  other 
magazine  writer  to  repeat  it.  But  he  had  made  Jupp 
temporarily  so  famous  that  a  follow-up  story  was 
editorially  worth  while.  And  the  natural  sequel 
was  a  study,  an  appreciation,  an  interpretation  of 
the  man  himself. 

I  followed  over  Steffens's  trail  without  finding 
any  illuminating  material  that  he  had  overlooked. 
Jupp  was  still  performing  his  daily  miracles.  Many 
of  his  convicts  were  outside  the  prison  walls,  with 
heads  unshaven  and  faces  tanned,  working  on  the 
prison  farms  from  which  Jupp  obtained  meat  and 
dairy  products  and  garden  truck  for  the  prison 
kitchens.  Gangs  of  his  criminals  were  making 
roads,  at  a  distance  of  fifty  miles  from  the  peni 
tentiary,  with  no  prison  guards  to  watch  them — 
with  only  an  armed  trusty  or  two  patrolling  the 
camp  at  night  to  see  that  no  unconvicted  citizen  of 
the  neighborhood  stole  the  road  tools  while  the  con 
victs  slept.  Jupp  had  built  a  prison  hospital,  from 
the  plans  of  a  condemned  architect,  under  the  super 
vision  of  an  imprisoned  building  contractor,  with 
the  labor  of  carpenters,  stone  masons,  bricklayers, 

[138] 


WARDEN  JUPP 


plumbers,  and  roofers  from  the  penitentiary  cells. 
In  the  same  way  he  had  remodeled  and  modernized 
the  cell  houses.  He  had  set  up  trade  schools  among 
the  prisoners.  He  had  encouraged  many  of  them  to 
take  correspondence  courses  in  subjects  that  in 
terested  them.  He  had  turned  his  penitentiary  into 
a  sort  of  academy  for  social  failures  who  had  been 
tried  and  rejected.  He  was  reclaiming  them  as 
easily  as  if  they  had  been  boys  who  had  failed  in  a 
college  examination  and  been  sent  to  jail  for  their 
failure.  And  he  was  doing  it  without  any  theory — 
as  far  as  I  could  see — without  any  philosophy, 
merely  by  the  exercise  of  practical  common  sense. 

Under  my  persistent  questions  he  formulated, 
reluctantly,  some  three  or  four  generalizations  only. 
"There's  no  such  thing  as  a  criminal  class.  They're 
just  men  like  you  and  me."  "Out  of  every  hundred 
convicts,  there's  always  maybe  five  or  six  that  I 
can't  do  anything  with.  They  ought  to  be  in  insane 
asylums."  "I  don't  usually  have  any  trouble  with 
a  murderer.  It's  the  hobo  that's  hardest  to  handle." 
"Anyone  could  do  what  I'm  doing.  There's  no 
trick  about  it.  You  just  have  to  know  how  to  get 
along  with  people." 

To  the  world  at  large,  of  course,  the  inexplicable 
wonder  was,  why  didn't  Jupp's  unguarded  road 
gangs  make  their  get-away?  To  Jupp  the  answer 
was  simple:  "I  don't  give  a  man  any  outside  work 
until  I'm  sure  he  won't  throw  us  down."  How  did 
he  make  sure  of  that?  By  studying  the  man,  by 
10  [  139  ] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

getting  reports  on  him  from  the  guards  and  trusties, 
by  correspondence  with  his  friends  and  relatives,  by 
talking  with  the  man  himself. 

I  watched  and  studied  Jupp  in  several  such  talks, 
without  learning  much.  "Well,  boy,"  he  would 
say  to  a  new  arrival,  "here  you  are,  and  you're  here 
for  five  years,  less  what  we  can  take  off  for  good 
conduct,  eh?  Well.  We're  all  trying  to  make 
things  as  easy  for  ourselves  as  we  can  in  this  board 
ing  house.  We  don't  want  you  here  any  longer  than 
we  can  help,  and  we  don't  want  you  to  come  back 
when  you  leave.  We'll  always  have  boarders  enough 
without  you.  We  don't  care  what  you're  here  for. 
The  question  with  us  is,  how  're  we  going  to  get 
along  with  you  now  that  they've  shoved  you  in  on 
us?  And  the  answer  to  that  is — it's  up  to  you.  See?  " 

He  sat  at  his  desk,  with  his  hat  on  the  desk 
blotter  before  him,  rather  indifferent,  slightly 
bored,  completely  matter-of-fact.  His  manner  said: 
"Here's  my  proposition.  Take  it  or  leave  it,  I 
don't  care." 

He  neither  looked  attentively  at  the  convict  nor 
avoided  looking  at  him.  He  showed  no  sympathy, 
no  hostility,  no  superiority,  no  desire  to  ingratiate 
or  persuade — no  feeling  and  no  purpose  at  all  that  I 
could  see,  except  the  one  that  he  expressed — to  make 
a  difficult  situation  as  easy  as  possible  for  all  con 
cerned.  But  I  noticed  that  when  the  convict  had 
once  looked  up  at  Jupp,  his  eyes  did  not  leave  the 
warden's  face  again  until  the  interview  was  over  and 


WARDEN  JUPP 


Jupp  said  mildly  to  the  guard  on  his  office  door: 
"All  right.  Who's  next  out  there?" 

The  next  might  be  a  convict  begging  for  the  free 
dom  of  "outside  work."  To  one  such  I  heard  Jupp 
say:  "I  don't  know,  Jim.  I'll  see.  I'll  talk  to  the 
boys.  I'll  let  you  know  by  Friday."  And  by  "the 
boys"  he  meant  the  other  convicts. 

To  another  he  answered,  flatly:  "No.  I  can't  do  it 
yet.  I  can't  trust  you  out  there,  and  you  know  it." 

The  prisoner  repeated  his  appeals. 

Jupp  shook  his  head.  "If  I  hadn't  anyone  to 
consider  but  myself,  I  might  take  a  chance  on  you, 
but  I've  got  to  think  of  the  rest  of  the  boys.  If  I 
send  out  a  man  that  breaks  and  runs,  they'll  all 
blame  me.  They'll  say:  'He  ought  've  known 
better  than  to  put  a  yellow  dog  out  here  with  us. 
If  he's  going  to  play  the  sucker,  he'll  have  us  all  in 
Dutch.'  And  that's  the  truth.  I  can't  take  chances. 
I've  got  to  be  sure." 

The  man  begged  and  promised  piteously. 

"Nope,"  Jupp  said.  "Can't  do  it.  Go  back  to 
your  work  and  wait.  Get  any  of  the  boys  you  can  to 
come  to  me  with  a  good  word  for  you.  If  you  have 
any  friends  anywhere,  tell  them  to  write  me.  Who's 
next  out  there?" 


I  found  out,  later,  that  Jupp  craftily  filed  all 
these  letters  of  indorsement  and  recommendation 
from  the  prisoner's  friends  and  relatives  in  the  out- 

[141] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

side  world,  and  card-indexed  the  addresses,  and 
used  the  information  to  trace  and  recapture  the 
convict  if  he  escaped.  I  noticed,  too,  some  uncon 
scious  duplicity  in  his  use  of  slang  and  slurred  speech 
in  his  talks  with  the  prisoners.  But  his  basic  sin 
cerity,  nevertheless,  was  obvious.  He  did  really 
consult  with  "the  other  boys"  before  he  "took  a 
chance"  on  any  prisoner.  If  a  man  on  outside  work 
showed  any  signs  of  yielding  to  the  temptation  to 
run  away,  his  gangmates  attended  to  him.  If  they 
could  not  stiffen  him  up,  they  reported  him  to 
Jupp  and  had  him  returned  to  his  cell.  It  was 
not  merely  their  loyalty  to  Jupp  that  held  them; 
it  was  also  their  loyalty  to  one  another,  to  their 
own  interests,  and  to  their  gang  spirit  which  Jupp 
worked  on. 

The  thing  seemed  so  simple  and  natural  that  I 
had  continually  to  remind  myself:  "All  over  this 
country  the  prison  system  has  broken  down,  and 
no  one  cares.  It's  the  greatest  failure  of  our 
American  civilization.  The  prisons  are  run  for 
political  patronage  and  for  contractors'  profits. 
The  prisoners  are  treated  barbarously.  They  come 
out  more  criminal  than  they  went  in.'  Moreover, 
the  whole  criminal  law  is  founded  on  the  archaic 
idea  of  revenge.  Men  are  sent  to  jail  to  be  punished 
as  criminals,  not  to  be  reclaimed  from  criminality. 
Anyone  who  tries  to  institute  any  sort  of  prison 
reform  is  accused  of  making  criminals  so  comfort 
able  in  jail  that  they  will  lose  their  fear  of  imprison - 


WARDEN  JUPP 


ment.  All  the  newspapers  of  this  state  are  printing 
that  charge  against  Jupp  at  this  very  minute. 
And  here  he  is — without  any  public  opinion  to  sup 
port  him,  without  any  example  to  encourage  him — 
holding  off  the  whole  political  plunderbund  of  his 
state  while  he  makes  his  prison  a  hospital  for  the 
moral  failures  of  society  instead  of  a  pest  hole  in 
which  every  kind  of  moral  disease  is  spread  and 
made  chronic.  How  does  he  do  it?  Why  does  he  do 
it?  What  is  there  in  him  that  makes  him  want  to 
do  it  and  able  to  do  it?  He  is  the  one  man  of  his 
kind  in  a  million.  Why  is  he,  miraculously,  that 
one  man?" 

Of  course,  he  himself  could  not  tell  me.  People 
never  can.  The  best  you  can  do  is  to  encourage 
them  to  "reminisce."  What  they  recall  is  some 
times  unimportant  enough,  but  the  fact  that  they 
recall  it  is  frequently  significant,  and  the  emo 
tion  with  which  they  recall  it  is  often  a  key  to 
character. 

I  tried  to  start  Jupp  back  into  his  past.  Had  he 
been  long  in  politics? 

No,  he  had  never  held  a  political  office  before; 
he  had  been  at  the  head  of  the  Middle  Western 
agency  of  a  New  York  life-insurance  company  when 
the  Governor  of  the  state  offered  him  the  wardenship 
of  the  state  penitentiary.  The  Governor  had  offered 
it  to  him  because  he  had  been  helping  released  con 
victs  to  find  jobs  and  get  back  on  their  feet.  He  had 
been  doing  that  for  years,  "off  and  on,"  as  he  said. 

[143] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

How  had  he  begun? 

"I  don't  know,"  he  answered.  "Just  drifted 
into  it." 

He  stuck  there. 

I  had  heard — though  not  from  him — that  he  had 
saved  the  Governor's  youngest  son  from  criminal 
associates  some  years  before,  and  that  the  Gov 
ernor  had  been  his  stanch  friend  ever  since.  When  I 
asked  him  about  it,  he  merely  shook  his  head. 

I  tried  another  tack.  "It's  your  theory,  isn't  it," 
I  suggested,  "that  a  prison  ought  to  be  a  reforma 
tory  instead  of  a  penitentiary — that  the  best  way 
to  protect  society  from  criminals  is  to  convert  the 
criminals." 

He  rubbed  the  back  of  his  bald  head,  worried. 
"Well,  I  don't  know,"  he  evaded  me.  "I'm  just 
trying  to  do  the  best  I  can.  We  have  fewer  escapes 
this  way  than  they  had  under  the  old  system — and 
fewer  'repeats.'  Besides,  there's  less  trouble  with 
the  boys.  It  costs  less  to  hold  them  than  it  used  to. 
They  work  better,  too.  And  by  cutting  down  the 
graft  the  penitentiary's  a  lot  less  expensive  to  the 
taxpayer.  We're  really  making  almost  an  even 
break  on  the  business  as  it  stands  if  you  figure  what 
it'd  cost  the  state  to  build  the  roads  we've  built, 
and  what  we  save  by  raising  our  own  food,  and 
what  the  hospital  would  have  stood  us,  and  what 
we  earn  out  of  the  quarry.  Of  course,  the  con 
tractors  are  sore.  And  the  unions  won't  let  us 
turn  out  things  for  sale,  or  we  could  earn  a  profit. 

[144] 


WARDEN  JUPP 


We're  putting  together  our  accounts  now  for  our 
annual  report.  I  wish  you'd  go  over  it  with  me  if 
you  have  time.  And  if  you've  any  suggestions  to 
make " 

It  was  evident  that  I  could  never  get  anything 
from  him  by  asking  him  questions.  We  talked 
about  his  annual  report.  He  agreed  that  he  ought 
to  make  it  an  official  statement  of  some  value  as 
news,  so  that  the  papers  might  be  tempted  to  print 
it.  What  he  needed  was  publicity.  If  he  could 
give  the  citizens  of  his  state  a  fair  view  of  what  he 
was  really  doing  in  the  penitentiary,  they  would 
surely  support  him  against  the  political  profiteers. 
We  began  to  choose  the  items  that  looked  as  if  they 
might  hit  the  public  in  the  eye — to  arrange  the 
report  so  as  to  star  these  items  conspicuously — 
to  gather  them  together  in  a  brief  but  arresting 
introduction  which  the  newspaper  men  would  be 
able  to  quote.  We  ended  by  deciding  that  I  ought 
to  rewrite  the  whole  report  in  a  manner  less  dull 
than  the  official  pomposity  in  which  it  was  being 
droned  out.  As  this  was  a  work  of  composition 
that  would  probably  take  some  days  and  require 
frequent  consultations  with  Jupp,  and  since  the 
penitentiary  was  three  miles  from  the  village  and 
its  Grand  Hotel,  I  accepted  his  invitation  to  live  in 
the  warden's  official  residence  while  I  was  collabo 
rating  with  him. 

It  was  a  little  white-brick  house  in  an  orchard 
outside  the  prison  walls.  And  when  I  arrived  the 

[145] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

door  was  opened  to  me  by  a  manservant  who  proved 
to  be  the  beginning  of  my  first  clue  to  the  truth 
about  Jupp. 

4 

His  name  was  Palin. 

Palin  was  a  lean  Irishman,  gray  and  shiftily 
subservient.  He  sniffed  at  me  inimically  until  he 
saw  my  bag  and  guessed  who  I  was.  After  that  he 
was  rather  pathetic  in  his  eagerness  to  please  me. 
I  supposed  that  he  was  some  old  political  pensioner, 
in  a  linen  coat,  acting  as  domestic  doorkeeper  to 
the  warden  and  anxious  to  stand  well  with  the 
warden's  friends. 

When  we  were  smoking,  after  dinner,  I  learned 
that  all  the  servants  in  the  house  were  convicts. 
This  Palin,  the  butler,  had  been  a  yeggman,  a  sort 
of  tramp  burglar.  The  cook  was  a  negro  preacher 
who  had  stolen  the  funds  of  his  church.  The  house 
man,  who  swept  the  floors  and  made  the  beds  and 
helped  in  the  kitchen,  had  been  guilty  of  larceny  as 
an  express  messenger.  The  coachman  had  shot  his 
employer  in  a  rage — when  the  man  refused  to  pay 
him  the  wages  he  had  earned — and  he  was  serving 
a  life  sentence. 

"No,"  Jupp  said,  "we  don't  have  any  servant 
troubles.  Do  we,  girl?" 

His  wife  smiled  shyly.  She  was  much  younger 
than  he,  and  she  had  been  almost  as  silent  through 
dinner  as  a  bashful  child.  He  had  married  her  out 

[146] 


WARDEN  JUPP 


of  the  restaurant  of  a  railroad  station  in  Detroit 
when  she  was  a  waitress  and  he  was  traveling  for 
the  Great  Lakes  Fish  Company,  before  he  took  to 
life  insurance.  They  had  no  children. 

"No  servant  troubles  at  all,"  he  said.  "They're 
all  prisoners — except  Pitz." 

Pitz  proved  to  be  the  second  clue,  some  days  later. 
At  the  moment  I  learned  only  that  Pitz  did  the 
gardening  and  tended  the  chickens. 

"He'll  stay  here  as  long  as  Palin  does,"  Jupp 
said.  "They're  a  couple  of  old  cronies.  And  if 
Palin  comes  back  for  another  term,  Pitz  '11  come 
along,  too." 

This  had  a  sound  of  Damon  and  Pythias  in  the 
underworld.  I  had  been  thinking  that  if  I  could  not 
get  an  article  out  of  Jupp,  I  might  use  my  oppor 
tunity  to  gather  the  raw  material  of  some  prison 
short  stories. 

"Did  you  notice  the  old  fellow  that  cuts  our 
grass?"  Jupp  asked. 

I  had  not.    Jupp  told  me  about  him. 

I  was  admitting  to  myself  that  there  was  no 
promise  of  any  insight  into  Jupp  to  come  from  his 
wife.  She  was  more  like  a  daughter  to  him.  Her 
attitude  of  mind  was  obviously  one  of  dumb,  adoring 
acceptance,  without  any  critical  understanding  of 
who  he  was  or  what  he  was  trying  to  do  in  the  world. 
He  managed  the  house  as  he  managed  the  prison. 
She  lived  there  as  she  might  have  lived  in  the  Grand 
Hotel,  reading,  playing  a  little  on  the  piano,  doing 

[  147  ] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

fancy  work.  She  had  been  living  so  ever  since  their 
marriage,  chiefly  in  hotels,  of  course.  She  had  a 
sort  of  faded,  sickly  prettiness,  very  touching. 

When  I  went  to  bed  I  thought  more  about  Pitz 
and  Palm  than  about  Jupp  and  his  wife. 


I  was  busy,  most  of  next  day,  in  Jupp's  "den," 
off  the  dining  room.  It  has  nothing  to  do  with  the 
story,  but  I  should  like  to  describe  that  den — as  a 
proof  of  how  difficult  it  was  to  predicate  anything 
about  Jupp  from  his  surroundings. 

Its  walls  were  covered  with  a  crimson  paper 
against  which  its  carpet  screamed  in  another  tone 
of  red  and  a  loud  design  of  pink  roses.  On  a  puffy 
plush  sofa,  in  one  corner,  reposed  a  single  fatuous- 
looking  sofa  cushion  decorated  with  a  colored 
portrait  of  a  Gibson  girl;  and  obviously  no  head 
but  hers  had  ever  reposed  there.  Jupp's  box  of 
stogies  waited  for  him  on  a  little  round  table  with 
the  crossed  bamboo  legs  of  a  tripod,  its  top  tacked 
about  with  ball  fringe.  There  were  two  of  those 
"American  rockers"  that  oscillate  curtly  on  sta 
tionary  platforms.  An  empty  office  desk  stood 
beside  the  countrified  lace  curtains  of  a  window  that 
looked  out  on  apple  trees  and  a  chicken  run.  Every 
thing  was  new,  clean,  very  plushy,  much  befringed 
and  fancy- worked,  and  brazenly  self-righteous  with 
the  air  having  been  bought  from  a  Chicago  mail- 

[148] 


WARDEN  JUPP 


order  catalogue.  In  this  room,  of  an  evening,  after 
his  wife  had  gone  to  bed,  Jupp  was  accustomed  to 
sit  in  a  rocker,  the  newspaper  on  the  floor  beside 
him,  smoking  a  rat-tail  stogie  and  meditating  on 
those  measures  of  prison  reform  which  were  so 
miraculous  in  his  day  and  generation. 

Palin  gave  me  this  picture  of  Jupp  meditating. 
He  gave  me  everything  else  that  he  knew  of  Jupp, 
in  a  quick,  shallow  stream  of  eager  information,  as 
soon  as  he  understood  that  I  was  "writing  up"  the 
warden  for  a  New  York  magazine.  But  in  spite  of 
all  his  praise  and  confessed  admiration  of  Jupp,  he 
failed  to  conceal  a  feeling  of  his  own  superiority — 
the  superiority  which  a  tramp  feels  for  a  housed  and 
restricted  citizen,  the  superiority  of  the  completely 
unmoral  maverick  for  the  conventional  soul  who 
is  restrained  by  the  accepted  fences.  I  listened  to 
what  he  had  to  say,  though  I  had,  of  course,  no 
intention  of  using  it.  I  would  not  print  anything 
about  Jupp  without  first  letting  him  read  it.  And 
Palin  told  me  chiefly  things  that  Jupp  would  not 
care  to  see  in  print. 

Jupp  and  he  had  been  boys  together  on  the 
streets  of  Brooklyn.  (I  made  no  notes  at  the  time, 
so  I  cannot  give  dates  and  addresses.)  Jupp's 
father,  he  said,  had  been  an  English  sailorman  who 
"went  off  on  a  ship,  one  day,  an'  f ergot  the  way 
home,  I  guess."  His  mother  was  some  sort  of 
foreigner — "a  Swede,  mebbe.  Anyway,  she  was  a 
hell-cat."  She  used  to  beat  the  boy  over  the  head 

[149] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

with  a  stick.    "I  mind  he  come  to  school  onct  with 
bruises  on  his  skull  the  size  of  a  baseball." 

Why  had  she  beaten  him? 

"He'd  snuk  off  with  the  gang  after  school,  'stead 
o'  makin'  a  bee  line  fer  home.  She  didn't  want 
him  runnin'  with  us." 

Why  not? 

"We  wasn't  teachin'  him  his  Sunday-school 
lessons,  I  guess." 

She  was  a  Lutheran,  apparently.  "We  was 
mostly  Dogans,"  Palin  explained. 

Jupp  became  the  butt  of  the  other  boys.  "He 
c'u'dn't  fight  fer  a  cent.  When  you  hit  'm  he'd  shut 
his  eyes.  His  name  was  funny — Jimmy  Jupp." 
They  had  a  rhyme  they  used  to  call  after  him  on 
the  streets: 

"Jimmy  Jupp, 
The  sailor's  pup, 
Lost  his  'fadder" 
An'  got d  up." 

"He  ust  to  say  *f  adder,'  like  a  Swede,  when  he 
was  a  kid. 

"She  made  him  work  Saturdays  fer  a  baker, 
deliverin',  till  he  got  fired  'cause  we'd  trip  him  up 
an'  spill  his  buns,  an'  run  with  what  we  c'u'd  grab. 
After  that  he  worked  fer  a  kike  that  had  a  dry- 
goods  store.  Cash  boy  er  somethin'.  She  ust  to 
go  round  an*  collec'  his  wages,  fer  fear  we'd  snatch 
'em  from  'm  on  the  way  home." 

Palin  must  have  been  flattered  by  my  interest; 

[150] 


WARDEN  JUPP 


he  talked  for  an  hour,  standing.  And  he  was  more 
than  interesting;  he  was  lambently  illuminating. 
He  made  it  plain  that  Jupp,  a  meekly  honest  and 
inoffensive  boy,  had  been  forced  to  feel  himself  a 
sort  of  illegitimate  and  ridiculous  outcast.  We 
know  now  that  such  a  lesson,  learned  in  childhood, 
persists  for  a  lifetime  as  a  hidden  influence  in  that 
dark  background  of  character  which  we  call  the 
subconscious  mind.  Consequently,  Jupp's  habit 
ual  silence  would  be  the  silence  of  timidity.  He 
could  not  talk  about  himself,  because — no  matter 
what  his  achievement,  his  success,  his  reward  in 
praise  and  public  notice — his  conviction  of  shameful 
inferiority  would  remain  untouched  and  still  uncon 
sciously  determinative.  Out  of  his  own  young 
suffering  he  had  learned  to  identify  himself  with 
misery,  so  that  he  would  automatically  sympathize 
with  guilt  and  ostracism;  but  he  would  not  under 
stand  the  source  of  his  sympathy,  and  he  would  be 
unable  to  express  that  sympathy  except  in  his 
unconscious  actions,  because  he  would  unknowingly 
expect  ridicule  and  misunderstanding  from  anyone 
who  approached  him.  So,  instead  of  admitting 
that  he  was  trying  to  protect  and  reclaim  his  per 
secuted  convicts  he  would  maintain  that  he  was 
acting  in  the  interests  of  the  taxpayer  and  trying 
merely  to  put  his  prison  on  "a  paying  basis."  In 
his  talks  with  the  convicts — though  he  would  uncon 
sciously  identify  himself  with  them  by  his  manner 
of  speech — he  would  be  guardedly  matter-of-fact 

[151] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

and  businesslike.  They  would  see  through  him; 
they  would  "get"  him  at  once,  as  if  intuitively. 
I  would  not.  I  would  need  a  cur  like  poor  Palin  to 
explain  him  to  me. 

"Palin,"  I  asked,  "how  did  he  ever  become 
interested  in  this  business  of  helping  cons?" 

"Search  me,"  Palin  grinned.  "It's  a  good  graft, 
just  the  same.  Jupp's  all  right,  but  he's  no  fool. 
Take  it  from  me." 

"No,"  I  said,  "I  can  see  he's  no  fool,  but  I'm  not 
so  sure  about  you.  How  did  you  happen  to  come 
together  out  here?" 

Palin  held  his  green-toothed  grin,  unabashed, 
"I'm  no  fool,  neither,  but  I'm  unlucky.  They  caught 
me  with  the  goods  an'  slapped  me  in  here  fer  ten 
years.  I  was  doin'  time  inside  when  Jupp  got  his 
job  here." 

"And  this  friend  of  yours,  Pitz?" 

"Oh,  we  sent  fer  Pitz.  He's  an'  ol'  side  partner 
o'  mine.  We  ust  to  run  together." 

"What  was  his  line?    Safe  cracking,  too?" 

"Naw."  Palin  was  superior  again.  "He's  just 
a  mut.  He  don't  know  how  to  make  a  livin'  at 
nuthin'.  We  teached  him  chicken  raisin'  since  he 
come  here.  He's  just  a  hot-air  artist." 

"You  mean  a  con  man?" 

"Naw.  Con  nuthin'!  He  c'u'dn't  con  a  white 
hen.  He  thinks  he's  an  arnachist.  I  ust  to  keep  'm 
when  we  was  out  together." 

"And  he  went  to  jail  with  you?" 

[152] 


WARDEN  JUPP 


"He  did  not.  He  went  onct,  back  in  York  State, 
but  that  was  Jupp's  fault.  It  was  Jupp  got  us 
pinched,  fallin'  down  on  us.  That's  why  he's  been 
kind  o' — you  know — lookin'  after  us  out  here." 
He  winked  despicably.  "I  guess  he  feels  like  he 
helped  put  us  on  the  blink.  You  know,  onct  you've 
been  in  stir,  you're  marked.  You  know.  The  cops 
lay  fer  you." 

"How  did  Jupp  fall  down  on  you?  Tell  me  about 
it." 

6 


He  told  me — after  he  had  made  me  promise  not  to 
speak  of  it  to  Jupp.  And  the  way  he  told  it,  it 
sounded  like  the  adventure  of  three  furtively  defiant 
rats.  I  tried  to  get  Pitz's  version  of  it,  later,  but 
Pitz  would  not  talk.  He  was  a  malevolent-looking 
foreigner  with  thin  black  hair,  a  limp  black  mus 
tache,  and  a  face  pitted  with  black  spots  as  if  it  had 
been  blown  full  of  bird  shot.  He  was  gentle  with 
his  chickens,  and  they  associated  with  him,  clucking 
amiably — which  I  took  to  be  proof  of  a  superior 
spiritual  clairvoyance  in  hens.  I  never  saw  Palin 
and  him  together;  they  must  have  fraternized  only 
in  the  evenings,  after  their  work  was  done. 

My  promise  to  Palin  did  not  prohibit  me  from 
trying  to  get  Jupp's  account  of  the  incidents  that 
had  brought  him  and  Palin  and  Pitz  together  for 
the  first  time.  And  his  version  of  the  adventure 
came  out  naturally  in  conversation  about  the  other 

[153] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

two.  His  story  was,  for  me,  the  final  explanation 
of  everything  in  him  that  had  puzzled  me.  Not 
obviously  so,  you  understand.  As  he  told  it,  it 
sounded  like  a  nightmare.  It  was  as  disjointed  as  a 
nightmare.  For  a  time,  his  motivation  throughout 
was  as  unreal  to  me  as  the  motivation  of  any  be 
havior  in  a  fantastic  dream.  And  like  a  dream,  it 
had  to  be  interpreted. 

For  instance,  neither  Palin  nor  he  explained  how 
Jupp  had  allowed  himself  to  be  involved  in  the 
incidents,  to  begin  with.  Jupp  was  then  working 
for  a  grocer  on  lower  Ninth  Avenue  in  New  York 
City.  He  was  out  walking  the  deserted  streets  of 
the  water  front  after  midnight.  He  ran  into  Palin 
accidentally,  on  his  way  home;  and  after  a  few 
minutes'  talk  he  turned  back  to  accompany  Palin 
to  a  "water-front  joint,"  at  Palin's  invitation. 

Observe  that  Palin's  psychology  is  clear  enough. 
He  had  been  padding  around  with  Pitz,  in  search  of 
a  dishonest  penny.  They  saw  a  man — who  proved 
to  be  Jupp — coming  up  the  empty  avenue,  on  the 
opposite  side  of  the  street,  alone;  and  Palin  crossed 
to  meet  him,  with  the  intention  of  either  begging 
from  him,  if  he  was  sober,  or  picking  his  pockets,  if 
he  was  drunk.  Pitz  remained  on  the  other  side  of 
the  road,  to  watch.  Their  predestined  victim  was 
walking  blindly,  his  head  down,  his  overcoat  collar 
up  to  his  ears,  his  hands  deep  in  his  pockets.  Palin 
bumped  into  him,  under  a  street  light,  as  if  acci 
dentally,  and  knew  he  was  sober  by  the  sturdy  way 

[154] 


WARDEN  JUPP 


in  which  he  took  the  impact.  He  stopped  and 
turned  a  bewildered  face  to  Palin,  and  Palin 
recognized  him. 

"Don't  know  me,  Jimmy,  uh?"  he  said. 

Jupp  did  not  know  him — had  not  seen  him  for 
years.  Moreover,  Palin,  in  thin  clothing,  was 
huddled  together  against  the  cold,  his  hands  in 
trousers  pockets  so  low  on  his  hips  that  he  seemed 
to  be  stooping  down  to  reach  them,  in  a  senile 
crouch. 

"I  thought  he  was  some  little  old  man,"  Jupp 
described  it,  "without  any  hair."  Palin  was  just 
out  of  jail  and  his  hair  had  not  yet  grown. 

To  Palin's  eye,  Jupp  acted  as  if  he  were  walking 
in  his  sleep.  "When  he  saw  who  it  was,"  Palin 
told  me,  "he  looked  round  like  he  didn't  know  where 
he  was,  an'  he  says,  'Where  did  you  come  from?' 
I  tol'  him  I  was  out  takin'  a  little  exercise,  an'  I  ast 
him  where  he  was  headin'  fer.  He  kind  o'  didn't 
hear  me.  Put  his  ear  down  to  me  like  he  was  deaf 
an'  made  me  say  it  over  again.  I  thought  he  was  sort 
o'  doped  er  somethin'.  I  ast  him  if  he  was  workin', 
an'  he  said,  'Yes.  Over  at  Sutler's.'  I  seen  he  was 
sore  at  Sutler  by  the  way  he  talked.  An'  then,  after 
a  little,  I  ast  him  to  come  down  with  me  to  a  joint 
an'  have  a  drink.  An'  he  come  along." 

Palin' s  psychology,  as  I  say,  is  clear  enough. 

But  why  was  Jupp  so  worried  that  he  was  walking 

the  streets  at  midnight,  like  a  man  in  a  daze?    And 

why  did  he  accept  the  invitation  of  an  evident 

11  [  155  ] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

criminal  to  drink  beer  in  a  water-front  thieves' 
resort? 

Palin  admitted  to  me  that  he  gave  this  invitation 
because  he  saw  that  Jupp  was  angry  at  his  employer, 
the  grocer;  and  Palin  conceived  the  idea  of  tempting 
Jupp  to  "get  back"  at  the  grocer  by  means  of  some 
thieves'  trick  in  which  Pitz  and  he  might  share  the 
profits.  The  conversation  between  Palin  and  Jupp, 
under  the  street  light,  putting  it  together  from  both 
their  versions,  ran  somewhat  like  this : 

When  Jupp  said  that  he  was  working  for  Sutler, 
Palin  sneered,  "Gettin'  rich,  uh?" 

"Rich!"  Jupp  snorted.  "Did  anyone  ever  get 
rich  working  for  him?" 

"No,"  said  Palin.  "Ner  fer  anybody  else.  They 
get  rich,  but  you  don't." 

Jupp  suddenly  plucked  his  hand  from  his  pocket. 

"That's  right,  by !"  he  cried,  with  a  vehement 

gesture  that  showed  he  had  been  touched  on  his 
bruise. 

Palin  followed  up  his  cue.  "You've  found  it  out, 
have  you?  Fow're  swift,  you&rel  I  got  wise  to  that 
five  years  ago." 

"And  what's  more,"  Jupp  went  on,  "they  don't 
pay  you  what  you  earn.  He  thinks  because  I'm  on 
the  square  he  can  dock  me  anything  he  likes  and 
I  won't  try  to  get  back  at  him.  It'd  serve  the  old 
skin  right  if  I- 

"Sure,  it  would,"  Palin  cut  in,  eagerly.  "You'd 
be  dead  right.  A  man's  either  got  to  work  fer  what 

[156] 


WARDEN  JUPP 


he  gets  er  take  it  from  some  one  that  does.  An' 
these  muts  don't  work  fer  it — do  they? — these 
sharks  that  own  stores?"  He  jerked  his  head  side 
ways  at  the  shop  fronts.  "They  don't  work  fer  it, 
so  they  soak  it  out  o'  the  kiyis  that  do.  It  makes  me 
laugh  ev'ry  time  I  see  this  town.  A  lot  o'  guys 
slavin'  to  keep  a  lot  of  other  guys  from  havin'  to  do 
any  thin'.  An'  a  lot  o'  cops  with  big  sticks  watchin' 
to  see  that  the  guys  that  work  don't  take  anythin' 
but  what  the  other  guys — that  don't  work — want  to 
give  ?em."  He  hitched  up  his  trousers  by  the 
waistband  and  cursed.  '  'It's  a  bug-house  game,  as 
Pitz  says." 

Jupp  opened  his  mouth,  and  shut  it  again  with  an 
effort.  His  mind  was  busy  somewhere  in  the  silence, 
at  a  distance  from  his  tongue.  It  was  his  tongue 
alone  that  asked,  at  last,  unexpectedly,  "  Where' ve 
you  been?" 

"I  jus'  got  out  o'  Bellevue  th'  other  day,"  Palin 
lied.  "A  fresh  mut  ga'  me  a  tap  on  the  koko  an' 
cracked  it.  That's  where  they  sheared  me."  He 
ran  his  hand  up  the  back  of  his  head. 

Jupp  nodded,  but  without  any  aspect  of  com 
prehension. 

"I  been  hangin'  out  with  a  gang  o'  fullahs  along 
down  here,"  Palin  said.  "We  got  a  sort  o'  joint 
where  we  get  together.  Come  along  down  an'  have 
a  bowl  o'  suds." 

"How  far  is  it?" 

"Oh,  jus'  the  docks." 

[157] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

Jupp  looked  at  the  empty  distance  blankly.  In 
a  moment  he  said,  "I'll  go  down  a  couple  o'  blocks, 
anyway." 

7 

This  is  all  very  well,  but  why  was  Jupp  on  the 
streets  at  midnight?  I  asked  him  that  question,  and 
he  said  he  had  had  insomnia.  What  had  given  him 
insomnia?  Well,  worrying  about  Sutler.  There 
were  two  clerks  in  Sutler's  shop;  some  groceries  had 
been  stolen,  and  Sutler  had  taken  half  the  value  of 
the  missing  goods  out  of  Jupp's  wages,  although 
there  was  no  proof  that  either  of  the  clerks  was  the 
thief.  This,  according  to  Jupp,  had  infuriated  him. 
The  other  clerk  was  a  mere  girl,  a  niece  of  Sutler's 
wife,  and  Jupp  was  sure  that  Sutler  had  only  pre 
tended  to  dock  her.  He  believed  that  Sutler  had 
exaggerated  the  value  of  the  stolen  groceries  and 
taken  all  their  actual  value  out  of  his  pay. 

Would  that  seem  a  convincing  reason  to  you  for 
Jupp's  behavior?  Would  it,  if  you  were  trying  to 
do  a  "soul  portrait"  of  Jupp?  Here  was  a  timid 
boy,  used  to  injustice,  brutally  trained  in  honesty, 
and  beaten  as  a  child  for  associating  with  this  very 
Palin  whom  he  was  now  accompanying  to  a  dis 
reputable  resort.  Would  Sutler's  injustice  have 
driven  him  to  fraternize  with  such  a  jailbird  as 
Palin?  Would  mere  injustice  have  put  him  out  on 
the  streets,  like  a  man  walking  in  his  sleep,  and 
ready  to  burst  out  with  a  threat  to  "get  back"  at 

[158] 


WARDEN  JUPP 


Sutler  by — by  what?  Obviously,  by  stealing  from 
him! 

No.  It  came  to  me  more  and  more  strongly  the 
more  I  thought  of  it.  Jupp's  insomnia  had  been 
the  insomnia  of  guilt.  He  had  already  "got  back" 
at  Sutler.  Suspected  of  stealing,  and  unjustly  fined 
for  stealing,  he  had  revenged  himself  by  taking  out 
of  Sutler's  till,  dollar  by  dollar,  the  amount  that 
Sutler  had  fined  him.  That  amount  was  twenty 
dollars,  as  I  discovered  from  a  significant  dis 
crepancy  between  Jupp's  story  and  the  account  that 
Palin  gave  me.  And  I  am  convinced  that  this 
twenty  dollars,  in  one-dollar  bills,  was  clasped  in 
Jupp's  hand,  in  his  overcoat  pocket,  when  Palin 
bumped  into  him  under  the  street  light. 

Now,  if  I  know  anything  about  a  man  like  Jupp, 
as  long  as  he  was  stealing  he  would  allow  himself  to 
feel  no  sense  of  guilt.  None  whatever.  Contrary 
to  all  the  moralists,  he  would  be  conscious  only  of 
the  emotions  of  a  timid  soul  in  revolt,  who  throws 
off  an  oppression  and  is  vindicated  to  himself  as  a 
man  of  spirit  by  that  act.  He  would  feel  no  shame 
before  Sutler;  he  would  feel  only  a  defiant  contempt 
for  the  man  who  had  tried  to  take  advantage  of  him 
and  had  overreached  himself.  The  little  roll  of  bills 
in  an  inner  pocket  would  be  a  constant  reminder 
of  exultation;  he  would  count  them  over  every 
night  with  a  sort  of  fierce  joy;  and  he  would  waken 
to  the  thought  of  them  every  morning,  resolutely. 

But  as  soon  as  the  appointed  sum  had  been  com- 

[159] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

pleted,  and  the  money  transferred  to  an  outer 
pocket,  the  glow  of  this  excitement  would  begin  to 
fade.  A  dozen  times  a  day  he  would  find  it  neces 
sary  to  prove  to  himself  that  he  had  not  done 
anything  dishonest;  and  though  he  convinced  him 
self  each  time,  he  would  find,  to  his  bewilderment, 
that  he  did  not  remain  convinced.  He  would  feel 
the  need  of  getting  the  support  of  some  other 
person's  assurance  of  his  innocence — and  then  he 
would  see  that  everyone  but  himself  would  consider 
him  guilty  beyond  argument.  The  law,  if  it  found 
him  out,  would  shut  him  up  in  a  prison  among 
thieves.  If  he  told  his  mother,  she  would  make  him 
return  the  money  and  declare  himself  ashamed  and 
sorry  for  what  he  had  done.  And  he  was  not 
ashamed!  And  he  was  not  sorry!  If  the  law  did 
not  prevent  Sutler  from  taking  twenty  dollars  from 
him,  what  right  had  it  to  prevent  him  from  taking 
the  money  from  Sutler?  It  was  all  a  conspiracy  to 
protect  Sutler,  while  Sutler  took  advantage  of  his 
power  to  steal  from  him.  Everyone  who  considered 
him  a  thief  was  either  the  dupe  or  the  partner  of  this 
game  against  him. 

And  wandering  about  the  streets,  fighting  out 
this  endless  inner  argument  with  himself,  he  had 
run  into  Palin;  and  Palin  had  at  once  said,  in  effect : 
"Sure!  You're  dead  right.  They're  all  in  a  game 
against  you.  I  understand.  I  been  through  it." 
And  Jupp,  fascinated,  supported  against  the  ac 
cusation  of  guilt  that  was  hounding  him,  would  be 

[160] 


WARDEN  JUPP 


unable  to  turn  away  from  Palm.  And  when  Palin 
invited  him  to  come  to  some  "joint"  that  Jupp 
knew  would  be  disreputable,  he  would  hesitate,  and 
look  at  the  vacant  nightmare  streets  through  which 
he  had  been  wandering  alone;  and  he  would  say, 
"Well,  I'll  go  down  a  couple  o*  blocks,  anyway." 

That  is  my  theory,  at  least,  of  what  happened. 
And  it  has  the  merit  not  only  of  accounting  for  the 
beginning  of  the  adventure;  it  explains  Jupp's 
conduct  through  the  exciting  incidents  that  fol 
lowed;  and  it  makes  understandable  the  emotion  in 
which  he  ended  and  the  extraordinary  spiritual 
effect  of  the  whole  affair  on  him  in  after  life. 

8 

In  any  case,  they  went  down  toward  the  water 
front  together,  Jupp  mute  and  absent-minded,  and 
Palin  talking  as  if  he  were  afraid  that  silence  might 
break  the  charm  of  his  influence  over  Jupp.  He 
was  depending  on  Pitz  and  alcohol  to  complete  the 
criminal  seduction  of  the  grocer's  clerk,  and  Pitz 
was  following  them,  on  the  other  side  of  the  street; 
but  Palin,  having  said  nothing  about  his  con 
federate,  could  not  now  call  him  in  without  danger 
of  arousing  suspicion.  He  planned  to  wait  until  he 
had  Jupp  at  a  saloon  table  before  he  gave  Pitz  the 
sign  to  join  them. 

They  were  nearing  the  water  front  when  some 
thing  confusing  happened. 

[161] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

A  fat  man  came  weaving  drunkenly  toward  them, 
his  coat  and  overcoat  unbuttoned,  his  thumbs  in 
the  armholes  of  his  waistcoat,  sucking  in  and  puff 
ing  out  cold  air  through  the  stem  of  a  pipe  from 
which  he  had  lost  the  bowl.  Jupp  did  not  notice 
him,  but  Palin  edged  off  and  passed  him  between 
Jupp  and  himself;  and  at  the  instant  of  passing, 
unknown  to  Jupp,  he  shouldered  the  staggerer  from 
his  balance  and  threw  him  against  Jupp.  Jupp 
caught  him  to  save  him  from  falling.  Palin  helped. 
The  man  struggled,  was  rolled  around  between 
the  two,  lost  his  hat  and  his  pipe  stem,  and  had  his 
coat  twisted  about  him  amazingly  in  his  efforts  to 
extricate  himself  from  their  attempts  to  keep  him 
steady.  When  they  finally  got  him  put  to  rights 
they  left  him  cursing  them,  and  went  on. 

Palin  began  to  talk  again,  feverishly.  "You  want 
to  hear  this  f  ullah  Pitz.  I  ain't  no  arnachist,  neither, 
but  I  got  a  right  to  live  without  bein'  worked  to 
death  by  a  lot  o'  bloated  muts  that  're  too  fat  to 
work  fer  themselves.  Pitz '  He  glanced  be 
hind  him.  He  dropped  his  voice.  "Go  on  down 
this  street,  Jim,  to  the  water  front  an'  turn  south. 
I'll  meet  you  a  couple  o'  streets  down.  I  want  to 
see  a  f  ullah " 

He  nodded,  turned  the  corner,  and  made  off  be 
fore  Jupp  could  speak. 

1  Jupp  came  out  of  his  trance  to  find  himself 
deserted.  He  went  automatically  almost  as  far  as 
the  next  corner;  then,  his  original  hesitation  reas- 

[162] 


WARDEN  JUPP 


serting  itself,  he  decided  to  turn  north  and  go  home, 
instead  of  turning  south  to  rejoin  Palin.  With  that 
decision,  he  thrust  his  hands  deeper  into  his  over 
coat  pockets  and  found  what  proved  to  be,  when 
he  drew  it  out,  a  silver  watch !  He  put  his  hand  into 
his  pocket  again  and  took  out — a  wallet !  He  looked 
at  them  stupidly.  He  looked  around  him,  stupidly, 
for  Palin.  He  saw  at  a  distance  behind  him  the 
drunken  man  whom  Palin  and  he  had  bumped  into; 
and  this  man,  under  a  street  light,  had  taken  off  his 
overcoat  and  was  searching  it  for  something  that  he 
had  lost,  obviously.  And  the  significance  of  this 
sight  reached  Jupp's  bewildered  apprehension  at  the 
same  moment  that  he  saw  a  stranger  on  the  opposite 
side  of  the  street,  watching  him. 

The  stranger,  of  course,  was  Pitz.  Palin,  having 
"rolled  the  rummy"  deftly,  had  slipped  the  watch 
and  the  wallet  into  Jupp's  pocket  and  fled  when  he 
saw  that  the  drunken  man  had  missed  them.  And 
he  had  left  Pitz  to  watch  the  innocent  repository 
of  the  loot. 

Now  I  do  not  wish  to  split  any  psychological 
hairs,  but  if  Jupp  had  not  been  already  feeling 
guilty,  would  he  not  have  taken  the  stolen  things  to 
the  nearest  policemen  and  cleared  himself? — even 
if  he  had  to  deny  that  he  knew  who  Palin  was,  in 
in  order  to  protect  him.  Well,  the  thought  does  not 
seem  to  have  occurred  to  Jupp  at  all.  He  tried  to 
get  away  into  a  side  street  where  he  might  drop  the 
things  into  a  gutter  unobserved.  And,  of  course,  he 

[163] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

was  followed  by  Pitz.  Jupp  quickened  his  pace 
when  their  drunken  victim  raised  a  drunken  shout 
behind  him;  and  when  Pitz  quickened,  too,  Jupp 
supposed  that  Pitz  was  a  plain-clothes  man  who 
was  shadowing  him.  He  had  turned  north,  toward 
home.  A  policeman  began  to  sound  the  alarm  with 
his  nightstick;  and  this  ringing  tattoo,  answered  by 
another  policeman  ahead  of  him  somewhere,  stopped 
him,  weak  in  the  knees.  With  an  effort  to  simulate 
innocence,  he  turned  to  look  back  at  the  pursuit, 
and  when  Pitz  overtook  him  he  asked,  faintly, 
"What's  the  matter  back  there?" 

Pitz  glared  at  him  with  a  baleful  contempt. 
"Where  d'you  think  you're  goin'?" 

"Home,"  Jupp  gasped. 

"You  go  down  where  you  were  tol'  to  go,"  Pitz 
said.  "Goon!" 

Jupp  went,  down  the  side  street  toward  the  water 
front  again,  and  Pitz  crossed  the  road  and  followed 
on  the  opposite  side.  Jupp,  of  course,  took  it  for 
granted  that  he  was  now  practically  under  arrest. 
He  supposed  that  the  detective  had  guessed  that 
he  had  a  rendezvous  with  Palin  and  intended  to 
gather  them  both  in  together. 


I  asked,  "Why  didn't  you  tell  him  the  truth?" 
He  shook  his  head.    "I  didn't  think  of  it." 
"What  did  you  think  of?" 

[  164  ] 


WARDEN  JUPP 


He  was  sitting  with  one  leg  tucked  under  him, 
a  stogie  in  the  puckered  center  of  his  lips,  swaying 
thoughtfully  in  his  American  rocker,  like  one  of 
those  Chinese  figurines  that  nod  the  head. 

He  replied,  queerly,  "I  was  thinking  that  when 
I  was  a  kid  and  used  to  go  to  work  in  a  drygoods 
store,  my  mother  used  to  give  me  a  bottle  of  tea  to 
take  in  my  lunch  box,  and  I  used  to  put  the  bottle 
between  the  blankets  on  a  shelf  at  the  back  of  the 
store,  to  keep  it  warm,  like  it  was  a  boy  in  bed." 

I  could  make  nothing  of  it.  He  said  it  with  a 
funny  sort  of  wistfulness,  his  eyes  fixed  on  nothing. 
I  was  puzzled. 

"What  made  you  think  of  that?" 

"I  don't  know.  Maybe  I  was  thirsty."  He 
smiled  apologetically. 

I  pretended  that  I  was  curious  to  identify  the 
exact  spot  on  the  water  front  where  this  had  hap 
pened.  He  could  not  remember.  He  recalled  that 
he  had  seen  a  squad  of  street  cleaners,  in  white, 
brushing  out  the  dust  from  the  crevices  between 
the  cobblestones,  and  that  the  wind  sent  this  dust 
smoking  down  the  empty  thoroughfare  from  their 
brooms.  He  recalled,  too,  that  in  the  silence  of  the 
night  the  throbbing  of  steam  from  the  ocean  liners, 
hidden  behind  the  "housework"  of  the  piers,  set 
the  air  beating  like  a  pulse.  Both  of  these  are  recol 
lections  of  irrelevant  things  unforgetably  perceived, 
under  a  great  strain  of  emotion,  by  a  divided  mind 
that  is  trying  to  interest  itself  in  externals  in  order 

[165] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

to  escape  the  unendurable  strain  of  its  thoughts. 
What  thought  was  Jupp  trying  to  suppress?  The 
thought  of  his  guilt,  I  should  say,  undoubtedly,  and 
of  the  accidental  justice  of  his  punishment. 

When  Pitz  and  he  came  to  the  water  front,  Pitz 
had  to  follow  directly  behind  him,  because  there  is 
no  sidewalk  on  the  opposite  side  of  the  street,  only 
wharf  sheds.  They  had  walked  down  almost  to  the 
next  street  corner  when  Jupp  heard  a  low  hiss  beside 
him,  and  Palin  caught  him  by  the  elbow  and  drew 
him  into  a  doorway  that  he  was  passing.  "There's 
a  cop  around  the  corner,"  he  whispered. 

Palin!    It  was  Palin! 

At  once,  in  a  despairing  eagerness,  Jupp  thrust 
into  Palin's  hands  the  watch,  the  wallet,  and  a  roll 
of  bills.  (And  here  was  the  significant  discrepancy 
that  I  have  referred  to.  Jupp,  in  his  account,  never 
mentioned  those  guilty  bills  as  separate  from  the 
single  dollar  that  was  found  in  the  purse.) 

"Hullo!"  Palin  said.  "Where'd  the  wad  come 
from?  Out  o'  the  wallet?" 

Before  Jupp  could  answer,  Pitz  shoved  in  be 
tween  them.  "HoP  on,  now,"  he  growled.  "I'm 
in  on  this." 

"All  right,  Pittsey,"  Palin  whispered.  "Keep  yer 
shirt  on." 

"What!"  Jupp  choked.     "Is  that— Is  he ?" 

"Sure,"  Palin  said.  "This  's  the  fullah  I  tol'  y' 
about.  This  's  Pitz." 

Jupp  turned  without  a  word,  with  no  more  than  a 

[166] 


WARDEN  JUPP 


blind  gesture  of  dismissal,  and  retreated  to  the  side 
walk.  He  was  out  of  it !  He  was  free !  He  began  to 
giggle  hysterically.  And  he  was  still  giggling  when 
he  walked  into  the  grasp  of  a  policeman,  who  asked, 
"What  were  you  doin'  in  there?" 

10 

Jupp  shook  his  head.  He  could  not  answer.  He 
could  not  think. 

"Uh?"  the  policeman  asked. 

He  had  begun  to  tremble.  The  policeman  took 
him  by  the  arm  and  led  him  back  to  the  doorway. 
And  Pitz  and  Palin  dashed  out  at  them,  tripped  the 
officer  in  a  sudden  scuffle  that  freed  Jupp,  and  fled 
around  the  corner,  with  Jupp  running  frantically 
after  them. 

Why  did  he  run? 

"I'll  be  darned  if  I  know,"  he  said.  "It  wasn't 
me.  It  was  my  legs.  They  just  ran  away  with  me." 
(The  automatic  flight  of  instinctive  guilt,  in  fact!) 

A  shot  sounded  behind  him.  Something  stung 
him  on  the  ear.  He  clapped  his  hand  to  his  head 
and  knocked  off  his  hat.  He  did  not  stop  to  pick 
it  up.  He  dashed  into  an  open  doorway  after  Palin, 
and  bounded  up  a  dark  staircase,  and  ran  along  dim 
halls,  and  leaped  up  more  stairways,  and  climbed 
a  ladder  to  the  roof .  There  he  slipped  and  fell;  but, 
without  taking  his  eyes  off  Palin,  he  scrambled  to 
his  feet  again,  and  when  Palin  disappeared  over  a 

[107] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

parapet  he  followed  at  full  tilt,  jumped  wildly,  and 
fell  five  feet  to  the  next  housetop.  That  fall  com 
pletely  "knocked  the  wind"  out  of  him.  Pitz  and 
Palin  were  opening  a  roof  scuttle.  He  lay  where  he 
had  fallen  beside  them,  till  they  thrust  him  through 
the  opening  and  helped  him  down  the  ladder  and 
let  him  lie  gasping  on  the  floor  while  they  closed  the 
trap  door  behind  them  and  fastened  it  with  a  hook. 
Then  they  dragged  him  down  the  hall  in  the 
darkness,  into  a  room,  and  shut  and  locked  the  door 
and  stood  listening,  panting  stealthily,  while  he 
writhed  on  the  floor  at  their  feet,  his  lungs  struggling 
painfully  to  get  breath. 

Palin  prodded  him  with  a  foot  and  warned  him 
to  keep  quiet.  He  groaned.  Pitz  struck  a  match 
and  blew  it  out.  They  picked  him  up  by  the  feet 
and  shoulders,  carried  him  to  a  corner  of  the  room 
farthest  from  the  door,  and  dropped  him  on  a  mat 
tress  there.  Footsteps  creaked  on  the  flat  tin  roof 
over  them,  came  and  went  slowly — and  passed  over 
to  the  next  house. 

They  waited  in  the  darkness,  a  long  time,  silent. 
And  then  Pitz  struck  another  match  and  lit  a  candle 
that  stood,  stuck  in  its  own  grease,  on  the  table  there. 

The  circle  of  candlelight  fell  on  a  disorder  of  books 
and  newspapers  on  the  table  top.  It  showed  white 
on  the  faces  of  the  two  thieves.  And  Jupp,  drawing 
deep,  tremulous  breaths,  saw  that  he  was  in  a  little 
tenement-house  room,  unfurnished,  its  single  win 
dow  covered  with  a  dirty  gray  blanket  that  had 

[168] 


WARDEN  JUPP 


been  nailed  over  the  sash.  "Now,"  Pitz  growled, 
"let's  see  what  you  got." 

Palin  pushed  aside  the  papers  and  emptied  his 
pockets.  The  watch  interested  him  for  a  moment 
only.  "Good  fer  three  bucks,"  he  said.  The  wallet 
had  a  single  dirty  dollar  in  it;  he  added  that  to  the 
roll  of  bills  and  counted  them.  "Twenty-one  good 
ones,"  he  said,  stroking  them  down  lovingly. 
"Seven  apiece." 

Pitz  clawed  over  his  share  silently. 

"Here's  yours,  Jim,"  Palin  said. 

Jupp,  lying  flat  on  his  back,  rolled  his  head  from 
side  to  side.  "I  don't  want  them." 

Palin  took  four  dollars,  passed  three  to  Pitz,  and 
grinned,  moistening  his  lips.  But  Pitz  did  not  even 
notice  the  inequality  of  the  division.  He  was  glaring 
across  the  room  at  Jupp. 

"Why  don't  you  want  them?"  he  demanded. 

Jupp  did  not  reply. 

"Stolen,  eh?    Is  that  yer  kick?" 

"I've  had  enough,"  Jupp  said  to  the  ceiling. 
"No  more  of  that  for  me." 

"Now,  you  look-a-here!"  Pitz  threatened;  and 
in  a  low,  hoarse  voice,  gripping  the  table  edge  and 
leaning  forward  like  an  orator,  he  broke  out  in  a 
long  rigamarole  of  argument  and  self-justification 
to  the  amazed  Jupp.  He  had  worked  out  some  sort 
of  theory  to  the  effect  that  all  religion  and  all  mo 
rality  were  merely  what  he  called  "camp  laws  of 
warfare."  Man  lived  by  killing  birds,  fish,  beasts, 

[169] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

and  plants — and  eating  them.  And  he  lived  by 
killing  his  enemies  in  war  and  looting  them.  "  'Thou 
shalt  not  kill' — what?  The  human  animals  in  yer 
own  camp.  Kill  every  thin'  else  that  breathes! 
Kill  yer  country's  enemy  an'  take  all  he's  got! 
'Thou  shalt  not  steal' — from  yer  neighbor's  tent. 
Steal  from  birds,  the  beasts,  from  everything  that 
lives!  An'  steal  all  you  can  carry  off  from  the  tents 
of  yer  enemies.  Yes!  Is  that  right?  Is  that  reli 
gion?  I  say  there's  no  right  an'  no  religion  in  it. 
An' I  defy  it!" 
•  "Aw,  cut  it  out,"  Palin  grumbled. 

"I  defy  it.  I'll  not  keep  their  camp  laws.  I'm  against 
them — against  them  all.  I'll  treat  them  the  way  they 
treat  everything  that's  too  weak  to  fight  them.  I'll 
take  what  I'm  strong  enough  to  take,  no  matter  what 
tent  I  find  it  in.  I'll  live  like  the  animals  they  hunt 
— like  the  birds — like  the  rats!  Yes,  the  rats!  I'd 
sooner  be  an  honest  rat  than  one  o'  these  snivelin' 
hypocrites — like  you — like  you,  you  coward ! " 

"For  sake!"     Palin   blew  out   the  light. 

"Shut  up,  will  you.    Shut  up.    Listen!" 

There  were  footsteps  on  the  stairs.  These  ap 
proached  slowly,  passed  the  door,  and  stopped  as  if 
at  the  ladder  that  led  to  the  roof.  Jupp,  holding 
his  breath,  could  hear  a  low  grumble  of  voices  and 
the  scrape  of  a  heavy  boot. 

The  steps  went  down  the  stairs  again.  In  the 
darkness,  Palin  said,  hoarsely,  "There's  blood  on 
the  ladder!" 

[170] 


WARDEN  JUPP 


"Blood!" 

"They're  lookin'  downstairs." 

Pitz  struck  a  match,  shaded  in  the  hollow  of  his 
hands.  Palin  rose  from  the  floor,  where  he  had  been 
lying  with  an  ear  to  the  crack  under  the  door.  They 
both  turned  to  Jupp.  And  the  side  of  Jupp's  head 
was  bloody  from  the  wound  in  the  tip  of  his  ear,  and 
his  hands  were  bloody,  and  there  was  blood  on  the 
mattress. 

Pitz  held  the  dying  match  near  the  floor.  A  spot 
of  blood  glistened  where  Jupp  had  lain,  just  inside 
the  doorway. 

"He  shot  me,"  Jupp  said,  weakly.  He  could  see 
the  hatred,  the  desperation  of  disgust  and  anger,  that 
lowered  in  their  faces.  Then  the  match  went  out. 

"We  're  up  the  flue ! "  Palin  said.  "There's  a  trail 
to  the  ladder." 

Silence. 

Pitz  said:  "It's  up  to  him.  He's  got  to  take  the 
stuff  an'  beat  it  down  the  fire  escape.  We  can  clean 
up  this  mess  an'  get  away  with  it." 

Palin  did  not  reply. 

"Look-a-here,  you,"  Pitz  ordered.  "There's  a 
fire  escape  outside  that  window.  It's  up  to  you. 
You've  got  to  beat  it  out  o'  this." 

Jupp  swallowed.  "No,"  he  said,  brave  in  the 
darkness.  "You  got  me  into  it.  You  stole  those 
things  and  put  them  in  my  pocket.  I  won't  take 
them,  and  I  won't  run  again  as  if  I  had  taken  them. 
I'm  no  thief  and  you  know  it." 
12  [ 171  ] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

"By !"  Pitz  swore,  "you'll  get  out  o'  here 

er  I'll  throw  y'  out!" 

"Hoi'  on  now,  Pittsey,"  Palin  interposed. 
"Jimmy,  if  you  stay  here,  you'll  be  caught  anyway. 
They'll  search  the  whole  damn  house.  They'll  see 
that  ear.  You  can't  hide  it.  The  only  chanct  you 
got's  to  beat  it  down  the  fire  escape." 

"I  won't,"  Jupp  said.  "If  I  got  to  go  to  jail,  I'll 
go  with  you  two  that  got  me  into  this.  You  can't 
put  it  off  on  me  again.  You  did  that  once.  You 
put  those  things  into  my  pocket,  and  I  got  scared 
and  ran.  I  don't  make  that  mistake  again.  I'm 
no  thief.  I  don't  care  what's  right  or  wrong. 
Say  what  you  like.  But  I  don't  run  again.  Never ! " 

11 

He  had  raised  his  voice.  And  it  was  this  that 
saved  him.  The  two  policemen  had  found  blood  at 
the  threshold  of  the  door.  They  knew  that  the  thieves 
were  hidden  in  the  room.  They  knew  that  there  was 
a  fire  escape  from  the  window.  They  pretended  to  go 
downstairs  together,  but  one  of  them,  creeping  back, 
watched  and  listened  at  the  door  while  the  other 
went  down  through  the  basement  to  the  yard  to 
cover  the  fire  escape.  The  one  at  the  door  heard  the 
argument  between  Jupp  and  his  companions. 

Pitz,  enraged,  lost  all  caution  and  threatened  and 
blustered  in  loud  tones.  Jupp  refused  to  be  intimi 
dated.  They  had  put  those  things  in  his  pocket, 

[172] 


WARDEN  JUPP 


he  insisted.  It  was  a  dirty,  sneaking  thieves'  trick. 
They  were  a  pair  of  pickpockets  and  they  had  used 
him  as  a  stall,  without  letting  him  know  what  they 
were  doing.  If  he  had  been  arrested,  they  would 
have  let  him  go  to  jail  alone.  Well,  if  he  had  to  go 
now,  they  would  go  with  him. 

He  was  interrupted  by  a  blow  on  the  door.  It 
was  the  springing  of  the  trap.  Pitz  and  Palin 
scuffled  across  the  room  with  the  secret  noise  of  two 
startled  beasts  of  darkness,  and  Jupp  heard  them 
struggling  with  the  window.  He  cowered  in  his 
corner,  faint  with  fear  and  loss  of  blood,  the  floor 
shaking  under  him  with  the  hurrying  feet  and  the 
battering  on  the  door  panels. 

In  the  confusion  that  followed  the  breaking  of 
the  door  lock — the  shout  of  voices,  the  flash  of  lights, 
the  sound  of  breaking  glass,  the  cries  and  curses  of 
a  hand-to-hand  encounter  between  the  policemen 
and  the  thieves  who  were  caught  at  the  window 
sill — Jupp  lay  against  the  wall,  his  arm  over  his 
eyes,  expecting  the  blow  of  a  night  stick.  And  when 
the  officers  had  dragged  Pitz  and  Palin  into  the  hall, 
and  he  understood  that  he  had  at  least  escaped  the 
violence  of  the  law,  he  lay  quiet  in  the  hope  that 
he  might  be  overlooked. 

Some  one  threw  a  light  on  him.  He  saw  a  police 
man  standing  over  him. 

"Your  name's  'Jim,'  is  it?" 

Jupp  replied  that  it  was. 

"Jim  what?" 

[178] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

Jupp  told  him. 

"Where  did  you  meet  these  two?" 

Jupp  poured  out  his  story.  The  policeman  listened 
to  it,  thoughtfully  sucking  a  tooth.  In  the  middle 
of  it  he  said,  "You  work  fer  Sutler,  don't  you?" 

Jupp  admitted  it. 

"I  thought  I'd  seen  you  somewheres.    Go  ahead." 

When  he  had  finished,  the  policeman  said :  "  Well, 
you'll  have  to  appear  as  a  witness,  anyway.  Gimme 
yer  address."  As  he  wrote  it  down  he  remarked: 
"You  was  lucky  that  bullet  didn't  come  an  inch 
further  to  the  right.  The  next  time  you  get  into  a 
game  like  this  you'd  better  stand  an'  take  what's 
comin'  to  you." 

"You're  blamed  right  I  will,"  Jupp  said,  fervently. 

"All  right.  Run  along.  We'll  let  you  know 
when  we  want  you.  Better  go  in  the  saloon  down 
't  the  corner  an'  clean  that  blood  off." 

He  helped  Jupp  to  his  feet  and  followed  him  out. 
Jupp  stumbled  eagerly  down  the  stairs.  He  was 
conscious  of  nothing  but  a  sick  desire  to  be  at  home 
in  his  bed. 

"Where's  yer  hat?"  the  policeman  asked,  at  the 
street  door. 

Jupp  put  his  hand  up  to  his  bare  head.  "I  dunno. 
I  lost  it." 

"All  right,"  the  officer  said,  and  he  departed 
with  the  unemotional  indifference  of  the  man  to 
whom  this  sort  of  thing  is  the  routine  of  life. 

Jupp  stood  a  long  time  in  the  doorway.    You  can 

[  174  ] 


WARDEN  JUPP 


imagine  what  he  was  thinking.  I  had  to  imagine  it. 
Jupp  could  not  tell  me.  All  he  could  recall  of  the 
moment  was  this:  as  he  went  down  the  street 
toward  the  corner  saloon  he  passed  the  doorway 
into  which  he  had  dashed  with  Palin,  just  after  he 
had  been  shot  in  the  ear;  and  here,  on  a  sidewalk 
grating,  he  saw  his  hat.  He  picked  it  up  and  put  it 
on.  "Funny  thing,"  he  said  to  me.  "That  hat 
looked  awful  good." 

"How  do  you  mean?" 

"I  don't  know.    I  liked  it." 

Now,  you  may  think  me  absurd,  but  —  that  was  a 
derby  hat.  It  was  the  visible  sign  of  his  escape  from 
criminality  and  the  persecutions  of  guilt.  In  putting 
it  on  he  put  on  respectability  again  and  became  a 
conventional  citizen  who  could  walk  up  the  street 
without  being  noticed.  The  whole  overwhelming 
emotion  of  his  sense  that  he  was  free  and  unsus 
pected  must  have  accepted  the  act  of  donning  that 
hat  as  something  symbolic  and  memorably  sig 
nificant.  And  there,  to  me,  is  the  unconscious 
reason  why  he  never  wore  any  but  a  derby  hat  after 
ward.  No  other  hats  ever  "looked  good"  on  him, 
as  he  said.  They  never  "felt  good."  He  "liked  a 
derby  hat  best." 


He  did  not  have  to  appear  as  a  witness  against 
Pitz  and  Palin  in  court.  When  he  reached  home 
that  night  he  was  shivering  with  a  chill  that  made 

[  175  ] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

him  ache  as  if  he  were  on  a  rack.  Next  morning  he 
had  the  grippe.  Two  days  later  it  was  pneumonia. 
When  he  recovered,  Pitz  and  Palin  were  already 
serving  their  sentences. 

He  did  not  see  Palin  again  until,  as  the  newly 
appointed  warden  of  his  penitentiary,  he  walked 
into  the  prison  kitchen  on  his  first  visit  of  inspec 
tion  and  found  Palin  washing  dishes  there.  Palin 
did  not  recognize  him.  He  went  back  to  his  office, 
thought  the  matter  over,  and,  as  his  first  act  of 
prison  reform,  sent  for  Palin  and  talked  with  him. 

Apparently  it  was  not  a  very  fruitful  talk.  "You 
can't  do  anything  for  Palin,"  he  said.  "If  people 
didn't  train  a  dog,  they  wouldn't  expect  it  to  be 
have.  Palin's  never  had  any  training.  He's  never 
had  any  proper  home,  any  decent  parents,  any 
thing  at  all  to  tie  to.  The  only  person  in  the  world 
he'd  ever  had  any  feeling  for,  as  far  as  I  could  find, 
was  this  man  Pitz.  He'd  had  a  letter  from  Pitz.  I 
got  him  to  write  to  Pitz  and  bring  him  on  here. 
They're  all  right  together.  Pitz  's  happy  here. 
So  's  Palin." 

I  asked  him  about  Pitz's  anarchism. 

"Oh,  that's  just  his  conscience  talking,"  Jupp 
said,  shrewdly,  "fighting  with  himself.  He  has 
character,  Pitz  has.  Palin  hasn't  any.  But  Pitz 
would  just  about  kill  him  if  he  threw  me  down,  and 
Palin  knows  it." 

I  wanted  to  say  to  Jupp:  "You  understand  these 
men  and  you  sympathize  with  them  because  you 

[176] 


WARDEN  JUPP 


were  a  criminal  once  yourself,  completely  self- 
justified,  but  still  a  criminal  in  the  eyes  of  the  law. 
That  night  with  Pitz  and  Palin  made  you  see  your 
self  in  the  first  ex-con  who  appealed  to  you  for  help, 
and  you  went  on  helping  them  until  you  arrived 
here.  You  have  unconsciously  imbibed  some  of 
Pitz's  philosophy  about  humanity's  'camp  laws/ 
You  have  no  theory  about  crime,  because  your 
theory  is  so  unmoral  that  you  daren't  formulate  it 
even  in  your  own  thoughts.  You  merely  express  it 
in  your  actions.  That's  why  you're  such  a  mystery ! ' ' 
Naturally,  I  said  nothing  of  the  sort.  I  said: 
"When  the  Governor  goes  out  of  office,  do  you  think 
you'll  be  able  to  hold  the  job  here?" 

"No,"  he  replied.  "The  gang '11  get  me." 
"And  all  this  work  of  yours  will  go  for  nothing?" 
He  thought  a  long  while.  "I  do  it,"  he  said, 
"because  I  like  it.  Some  one  will  always  be  doing 
the  same  sort  of  thing,  for  the  same  reason.  In 
time,  people  '11  learn  it's  the  best  way  to  run  a 
prison.  It  takes  time.  It  takes  time.  Don't  worry." 
He  lost  his  prison,  as  he  had  predicted,  and  he 
never  got  another.  He  disappeared,  with  Pitz  and 
Palin,  in  the  silence  that  soon  afterward  covered 
all  the  experiments  of  social  and  political  reform 
in  the  Middle  West.  I  heard  that  he  had  gone  back 
into  life  insurance;  and  when  Warden  Osborne 
began  his  reforms  in  the  New  York  state  peni 
tentiary  I  sent  some  of  the  newspaper  clippings  of 
Osborne's  fight  to  Jupp  with  a  note  of  comment. 

[177] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

It  was  characteristic  of  Jupp  that  he  did  not  trouble 
to  reply.  Later,  I  heard  that  he  was  dead,  but  I 
have  never  been  able  to  confirm  the  report.  And 
I  have  no  idea  what  became  of  Pitz  and  Palin. 

I  did  not  write  any  "soul  portrait"  of  Jupp — for 
obvious  reasons.  I  never  shall  write  one  now,  I 
suppose — unless  this  is  it. 


V.    PETER  QUALE 

"We  used  to  say  'P.  Q.'  as  we  say  T.  R.'  or  'John 
D.'  in  common  consonance  with  that  rule  of  use 
by  virtue  of  which  always  we  put  as  briefly  as  is 
humanly  possible  whatever  it  is  that  circumstances 
compel  us  most  frequently  to  communicate." 
—"Topics  of  the  Times,"  New  York  Times. 


OLD  P.  Q/s  life  has  been  written  many  times 
in  edifying  detail,  but  I  have  never  seen  his 
death  receive  more  than  its  newspaper  notice.  His 
life  has  been  glorified  as  a  sort  of  latter-day  fairy 
tale,  and  told  and  retold  for  the  encouragement  of 
young  American  ambition;  but  his  death  has  been 
passed  over  as  if  it  were  just  a  date  in  his  career 
— the  closing  date,  of  course,  but  no  more  significant 
than  the  word  "finis"  at  the  end  of  the  story — 
whereas,  like  many  another  death,  it  was  the  real 
test  and  assay  of  his  whole  life  and  of  all  the  values 
by  which  he  had  been  living.  „ 

That  is  why,  in  attempting  a  portrait  of  old 
P.  Q.,  I  should  like  to  pose  him  finally  on  his  back 
in  his  sickbed,  staring  at  the  plaster  root  of  the 
chandelier  in  his  ceiling,  rather  than  sitting  on  the 
summit  of  his  money  bags,  sneering  down  on  the 
Common  People  groveling  before  him,  as  he  used 

[1791 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

to  sit  and  sneer  in  the  newspaper  cartoons  of  him 
when  McKinley  was  President. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  outside  of  a  caricature,  old 
P.  Q.'s  nose  could  not  be  imagined  in  a  sneer.  It 
was  not  a  sufficiently  mobile  nose  to  sneer  with. 
He  had  a  set  expression.  You  might  think  it  the 
expression  of  an  autocratic  ideal  of  grim  impassivity. 
In  a  photograph,  he  always  showed  fierce-eyed 
eagle  features,  with  his  jaw  firm  and  his  mouth 
dangerous.  And  in  his  business  encounters,  among 
his  fellow  directors,  or  presiding  at  the  many  boards 
which  he  controlled,  he  faced  friends  and  enemies 
alike,  silent,  impassive,  superior,  directing  one  of 
his  confidential  secretaries  to  make  the  notes  he 
needed  or  to  read  aloud  to  the  meeting  the  state 
ments  of  the  business  in  hand.  And  there  was 
something  impressive,  something  almost  majestical, 
in  the  way  he  sat  aloof  at  those  conferences,  in  the 
midst  of  all  the  writing  and  reading  and  argument 
and  consultation  that  went  on  around  him,  scarcely 
opening  his  lips,  rarely  moving  his  great  lank  bulk, 
until  he  had  made  his  mind  up.  Then  he  shifted 
impatiently  in  his  chair  and  leaned  forward.  If 
this  movement  was  not  enough  to  obtain  silence, 
he  cleared  his  throat.  The  heads  turned  to  him; 
the  voices  ceased.  He  gave  his  decision  in  the 
meagerest  words.  If  anyone  who  did  not  know  his 
habits  continued  to  argue  after  his  conclusion  had 
been  announced,  he  merely  waited  in  silence,  with 
his  eyes  elsewhere,  until  it  dawned  on  the  stranger 

[180] 


PETER  QUALE 


that  the  matter  had  been  disposed  of.  Then,  at  a 
nod,  one  of  his  prime  ministers  took  up  the  next  item 
on  the  order  of  the  day.  He  adjourned  the  meeting 
by  rising  and  leaving  the  table;  the  necessary  motion 
of  adjournment  was  put  after  he  had  gone. 

All  this  had  a  fine  look  of  autocracy.  It  was  not 
autocracy  alone.  It  was  the  mask  of  infirmity — 
the  hussar  dolman  and  the  big  sword  that  concealed 
the  weakness  of  the  Kaiser's  withered  arm. 

I  got  my  first  suspicion  of  that  from  his  youngest 
son,  Robert  Quale,  whom  we  called  "Bob  White" 
at  college. 

Bob  had  a  portrait  of  his  father  on  the  mantel 
piece  of  his  room,  in  the  center  of  a  chorus  of  photo 
graphs  of  stage  beauties.  The  old  man  looked 
especially  fierce  and  domineering  in  that  blandishing 
company.  Bob  grinned  at  his  dad's  glare.  "Scared 
of  the  camera,"  he  said.  "Trying  to  intimidate  it. 
He  does  it  with  everyone  he  meets.  Funny  how  he 
gets  away  with  it."  He  straightened  up  the  picture 
affectionately.  "He's  like  an  old  dog  guarding  his 
doorstep  and  bristling  at  everyone  who  has  to  come 
to  his  front  porch." 

That  was  not  the  popular  idea  of  Peter  Quale. 
Scared?  Bristling?  On  his  guard? 

What  was  he  on  his  guard  against? 

Well,  for  one  thing,  "the  old  pirate,"  as  Bob 
called  him,  had  never  had  much  education.  In  fact, 
to  confess  the  incredible  truth,  he  could  hardly 
more  than  write  his  name  presentably ;  and  wherever 

[181] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

possible  he  signed  only  his  initials.  (The  New  York 
Times  notwithstanding,  this  was  the  origin,  I  take 
it,  of  the  universal  shortening  of  his  name  to 
"P.  Q.").  His  handwriting  was  clumsy,  childish, 
faltering.  His  spelling  was  disgraceful.  He  read 
like  a  schoolboy.  Hence  the  confidential  secretaries, 
and  the  prime  ministers  who  acted  as  chairmen,  and 
the  royal  aloofness  from  the  petty  details  of  reports 
and  documents  and  the  wording  of  motions  and  the 
making  of  notes. 

It  struck  me  as  one  of  those  behind-the-scenes 
facts  of  life  that  seem  so  illuminating  to  adolescence. 
It  interested  me  permanently  in  old  P.  Q.,  flattering 
me  with  a  sense  of  superior  knowledge  whenever  I 
saw  him  cartooned,  or  editorially  attacked,  or 
eulogized  in  a  magazine  series  of  "Great  American 
Fortunes."  Many  of  his  associates  must  have 
known  his  little  secret,  yet  it  was  never  put  in  print 
so  far  as  I  saw,  and  none  of  his  biographers  betrayed 
it.  I  felt  that  I  was  "on  to"  something  about  him 
that  vaguely  explained  qualities  of  his  which  im 
posed  on  everybody  else.  And  I  still  think  that  it 
accounts  for  his  miraculous  memory,  which  was 
infallible  for  the  smallest  details,  because  it  had 
never  been  weakened  by  dependence  on  memoranda. 
And  it  accounts  for  his  large  mental  grasp  of  very 
complicated  undertakings,  because  he  saw  them 
not  in  reported  words  and  persuasive  arguments, 
but  in  the  concrete  facts  which  the  words  might 
cloud  and  the  arguments  misinterpret.  And  it 

[182] 


PETER  QUALE 


accounts  for  his  ability  to  carry  all  his  business 
always  in  his  head,  and  to  go  over  it  endlessly  at 
his  leisure,  in  the  otherwise  unoccupied  silence  in 
which  he  seemed  to  pass  his  life. 


At  any  rate,  as  I  say,  it  interested  me  perma 
nently  in  old  P.  Q.  and  in  Bob's  gossip  about  him. 
The  psychology  of  Bob's  fondness  for  talking  of  him 
I  did  not  understand.  Bob  seemed  cheerfully  dis 
paraging  and  yet  contemptuously  proud  of  his  dad. 
He  was  apparently  puzzled  by  the  old  man,  curious 
about  him,  and  in  some  way  inimical  to  him.  It 
was  an  odd  attitude  for  a  son.  And  he  told  odd 
things  about  his  father,  among  them  one  thing  that 
seemed  unimportant  enough  at  the  time,  though  I 
should  consider  it,  now,  as  essential  to  a  portrait  of 
P.  Q.  as  the  eyes  in  his  head. 

He  had  arrived  in  New  York,  on  an  immigrant 
ship  from  the  north  of  Ireland,  sometime  during  the 
famine  of  1845-48.  And  he  arrived  alone,  fatherless 
and  motherless,  a  small  boy  in  a  strange  world. 
His  father,  dying  of  what  was  called  "ship  fever," 
had  been  buried  at  sea.  The  mother,  it  was  under 
stood,  had  died  in  the  old  country. 

He  went  to  work  as  a  stable  boy  in  the  barns  of 
a  water-front  trucking  company.  He  was  big  and 
strong  for  his  age,  and  in  a  few  years  he  was  driving 
a  truck  himself.  He  must  have  looked  like  a  young 

[  183  ] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

charioteer  at  the  reins,  tall,  square-shouldered,  well 
balanced  on  his  feet.  He  had  that  air  even  in  his 
old  age. 

Out  of  his  savings  he  soon  bought  a  team  of  horses 
and  a  wagon,  and  began  hauling  dirt  from  excava 
tions.  Next  thing,  he  was  taking  contracts  for  such 
work,  with  gangs  of  men  and  trains  of  wagons  under 
his  orders.  Then  he  became  a  building  contractor. 
He  bought  land  and  he  erected  houses.  He  owned 
an  office  building.  He  laid  street-car  lines  and  took 
part  payment  in  company  bonds.  He  laid  gas  pipes 
and  mains,  and  held  a  mortgage  on  a  gas  company. 
When  the  early  gas  wars  ended  he  owned  a  control 
ling  interest  in  the  consolidation.  He  became  a 
traction  magnate  by  a  similar  process  of  acquiring 
liens  on  the  actual  properties  of  the  street  railways 
while  speculators  made  and  lost  fortunes  in  the 
stocks.  He  never  speculated,  but  whenever  a  trac 
tion  company  went  into  bankruptcy  and  was  reor 
ganized,  it  was  found  that  he  owned  its  real  assets. 
He  was  busy,  in  that  way,  all  through  the  Civil  War 
and  the  Reconstruction  period  and  the  various  booms 
and  panics  that  came  and  went  for  twenty  years  after. 
Nothing  but  an  earthquake  could  have  shaken  his 
financial  stability.  His  fortune  was  all  bricks  and 
stones  and  steel  and  mortar  and  pipes  and  rails. 

" Queer  old  bird,"  Bob  said  once.  "He  knows  the 
price  of  everything  that  you  can  handle.  The  mater 
bought  a  water  pitcher  once — very  showy — and  asked 
him  what  he  thought  it  had  cost,  when  it  came  on 

[184] 


PETER  QUALE 


the  table.  He  took  it  up  and  looked  at  it  and  put 
it  down.  'Thirty-seven  cents,' he  said.  And  she  was 
furious.  She  thought  there  must  be  a  price  mark  on 
it.  There  wasn't.  It  had  cost  thirty-seven  cents, 
but  she  thought  it  looked  like  five  dollars  at  least." 

I  suggested  that  he  had  learned  values  from  the 
hardships  of  his  youth. 

"Hardships  nothing,"  Bob  said.  "That  stuff 
about  the  penniless  barefooted  Irish  boy  is  all 
buncombe.  When  he  landed  in  this  country,  one 
of  the  first  things  he  did  was  to  bank  a  hundred 
pounds  that  he  had  in  his  pocket." 

"A  hundred  pounds!    Five  hundred  dollars?" 

"Yes,  and  he  never  drew  any  of  it  out.  He  began 
adding  to  it  right  away,  and  he's  been  adding  to  it 


ever  since." 


"Where  did  he  get  it?" 

"Search  me.  And  another  thing.  He's  not  Irish. 
Quale  is  a  Manx  name.  I  told  him  so  once,  playing 
checkers  with  him,  and  I  saw  that  he  knew  it.  He 
looked  fussed.  If  he  came  from  the  north  of  Ireland, 
I'm  a  Pomeranian.  I  tried  to  make  him  talk  about 
Ireland,  one  night,  and  he  just  growled  that  he  didn't 
remember  anything  about  it.  He  remembers  some 
thing  or  other  that  he  doesn't  want  to  talk  about." 

It  seemed  natural  to  me  that  a  man  in  P.  Q.'s 
position  should  not  care  to  talk  about  his  origin. 
I  was  more  interested  in  Bob's  account  of  how  they 
played  checkers  together.  The  mighty  P.  Q.  brood 
ing  over  a  checkerboard!  Here  was  an  aspect  of 

[185] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

greatness  that  made  even  the  caricatures  of  the 
cartoonists  look  stilted.  "Samson  struggling  with 
a  match  box." 

He  played  checkers  at  night  because  he  read  so 
laboredly,  and  he  had  never  been  a  great  theater 
goer,  and  he  considered  chess  a  waste  of  intellect, 
and  he  had  some  antiquated  moral  feeling  against 
cards  as  the  implements  of  improvidence.  His 
moral  feeling,  however,  did  not  prevent  him  from 
cheating  at  checkers  if  he  were  not  watched. 

"He'll  steal  one  of  your  kings  off  the  board  if 
you're  winning,"  Bob  said,  "and  most  people  are 
so  afraid  of  him  they'll  let  him  do  it.  He  doesn't 
do  it  with  me.  The  first  time  I  caught  him  at  it, 
I  said:  'Here!  You've  sneaked  one  of  my  kings  off!' 

"He  glared  at  me.    'Sneaked!    Sneaked!' 

"'Yes,'  I  said,  'you've  taken  it  off  that  king  row. 
You  put  it  back.' 

"He  tried  to  bluff  me  out  of  it,  growling  and 
snapping  at  me.  I  put  it  back  myself.  'It  was 
there,'  I  said,  'and  I  remember  it  was  there.  Go 
ahead.  It's  your  move.' 

"He  said  something  about  having  'brushed  it  off 
by  accident,  maybe,'  and  I  let  it  go  at  that,  but  I 
knew  he'd  taken  it  off  purposely,  because,  after  a 
little  while  his  lips  began  to  twitch.  That's  about 
as  near  as  he  ever  gets  to  a  smile." 

I  doubted  that  story.  Bob  was  not  a  brilliant 
student.  I  did  not  suppose  that  it  would  be  neces 
sary  for  one  of  the  omnipotent  directing  minds  of 

[186] 


PETER  QUALE 


Manhattan  to  steal  men  off  the  checkerboard  in 
order  to  beat  him. 

Bob  explained:  "Did  you  ever  see  an  old  book 
called  The  American  Draught  Player,  written  by  a 
man  named  Spayth?  No?  Well,  all  the  possible 
games  on  a  checkerboard  are  worked  out  in  it  from 
the  very  first  move.  If  you  learn  off  a  few  games 
like  'Single  Corner'  and  'Old  Fourteenth,'  it's  prac 
tically  impossible  to  beat  you.  I  found  that  book 
years  ago,  in  a  second-hand  store  on  Twenty-third 
Street,  and  I  began  learning  the  games  by  heart, 
until  now  I  can  lick  the  old  man  whenever  I  want 
to,  and  when  I  don't  want  to  I  can  make  the  game 
a  draw.  He  will  stick  at  it  sometimes  till  three  in 
the  morning,  trying  to  come  out  a  game  ahead  of 
me,  but  I  never  let  him." 

"Why  not?" 

"If  he  had  his  way  I'd  never  be  able  to  call  my 
soul  my  own.  He  does  it  to  everybody  except  me. 
That's  why  I  never  ask  him  for  money.  I  get  it 
from  the  mater.  I  won't  let  him  buy  me  and  I 
won't  let  him  scare  me.  And  I'm  able  to  get  along 
with  him  better  than  anybody.  If  I  let  him  beat 
me  at  checkers,  he'd  soon  be  treating  me  the  way 
he  does  all  the  rest. 


Perhaps  I  should  explain  that  Bob,  having  been 
expelled  from  a  number  of  preparatory  schools  in 
the  States,  had  been  exiled  to  Upper  Canada  College 

13  [ 187  ] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

in  Toronto,  with  some  idea  of  getting  him  away  from 
evil  associates,  I  suppose.  He  had  either  conformed 
to  Canadian  discipline  or  he  had  hoodwinked  it, 
and  he  had  been  graduated  into  Toronto  University, 
though  without  honors,  as  a  special  student.  It 
was  in  the  university  lecture  rooms  that  I  first  met 
him — a  small,  black-haired  youth,  quick  in  his 
gestures  and  swiftly  contemptuous  in  his  speech. 
He  did  not  belong  to  the  sporting  ring  in  Residence, 
for  several  obvious  reasons:  he  was  on  very  short 
allowance  from  his  mother,  so  that  he  could  not 
keep  pace  with  the  expenditures  of  the  college 
bloods;  he  had  no  physical  capacity  for  athletics 
and  no  congenial  interest  in  them  to  make  him  at 
his  ease  with  the  Residence  coterie;  and  finally, 
he  seemed  much  older  in  his  mind  than  any  of  us 
and  regarded  the  dissipations  of  our  moneyed  stu 
dents  as  rather  childish.  "Cutting  their  milk  teeth 
on  beer  bottles,"  he  said.  He  did  not  conceal  his 
superior  sophistication.  They  retaliated  by  calling 
him  "the  Cold  Bird,"  and  "Young  Tenderloin" 
and  "Little  Punksticks"  because  he  smoked  ciga 
rettes  incessantly — Egyptian  cigarettes. 

On  the  other  hand,  he  was  equally  alien  to  the 
studious  college  "plugs."  He  attended  lectures 
irregularly  and  failed  in  his  examinations.  What 
knowledge  he  acquired  he  seemed  to  get  by  some 
process  of  occult  absorption.  He  played  a  piano  in 
his  room  when  he  should  have  been  studying,  and 
he  was  a  connoisseur  in  musical  comedies.  Common 

[188] 


PETER  QUALE 


report  credited  him  with  being  idly  dissipated,  and 
he  disappeared  sometimes  for  days;  but  he  had  no 
confidants  in  his  dissipations,  so  that  he  could  not 
be  accused  of  setting  a  bad  example;  and  the  author 
ities  blinked  at  his  absences. 

We  became  friends  as  a  result  of  mere  propin 
quity.  In  many  of  the  classes  the  students  were 
assigned  seats  alphabetically,  and  when  there  were 
no  "  P's  "  to  come  between  us,  he  sat  beside  me.  He 
was  interesting — totally  unlike  a  Canadian  boy — 
and  appealing  in  his  friendless  independence.  We 
got  into  the  habit  of  spending  our  evenings  together. 

I  did  not  begin  to  understand  him  until  I  saw  him 
in  his  home,  on  an  Easter  visit  to  New  York;  and 
then  it  became  obvious  that  his  attitude  to  his  father 
was  due  to  the  circumstance  that  there  were  two  fac 
tions  in  the  family  and  Bob  was  of  his  mother's  party. 
He  was  fifteen  or  twenty  years  younger  than  either 
of  his  two  married  brothers,  John  Quale,  who  was  in 
Wall  street,  and  Paul  Arbuthnot  Quale,  who  acted  as 
his  father's  deputy  in  charge  of  the  Quale  real  estate. 
These  two  had  their  own  homes  and  their  own  inter 
ests.  They  came  on  Sunday  evenings,  with  their 
wives,  to  the  old  house  off  Gramercy  Park,  and  the 
wives  chatted  with  each  other  and  with  Mrs.  Quale 
— chiefly  about  their  children — but  the  men  were 
mostly  silent.  They  seemed  completely  indifferent 
to  Bob,  and  he  to  them.  I  had  never  seen  brothers 
show  so  little  mutual  interest  or  affection. 

John,  born  in  the  early  days  of  his  father's  for- 

[189] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

tune,  had  been  sent  to  a  business  college.  He  had 
made  an  independent  career  for  himself  ia  specu 
lative  finance.  Paul  had  gone  through  a  sectarian 
college  and  come  out  with  a  strong  sense  of  the 
moral  power  of  money  in  support  of  revealed  reli 
gion.  Neither  of  them  smoked  or  drank  or  enjoyed 
any  convivial  vices.  Bob  was  undoubtedly  an 
unconscious  protest  against  them.  He  had  been 
his  mother's  child;  she  had  refused  to  let  P.  Q. 
dictate  his  upbringing,  and  she  had  tried  to  educate 
him  "like  a  gentleman."  I  don't  know  whether 
she  thought  she  had  succeeded.  To  the  others  of 
the  family,  of  course,  his  habits  were  a  scandal.  He 
had  long  since  shown  his  brothers  that  they  could 
not  manage  him.  They  ignored  him,  therefore. 

The  house  was  a  large,  double  house,  of  which 
Mrs.  Quale  occupied  one  half  and  her  husband  the 
other.  Bob  had  an  upper  floor  to  himself,  on  her 
side  of  the  establishment,  with  a  billiard  room  that 
had  once  been  a  nursery,  and  a  large  sitting  room 
with  shelves  of  books  which  he  never  opened,  and  a 
grand  piano.  His  mother  sat  there  with  us  one 
evening  while  he  played  restlessly;  but  for  the  most 
part  we  were  left  to  our  own  amusements.  She  had 
evidently  learned  that  her  affectionate  anxiety  grated 
on  him  and  she  concealed  it  from  him. 

"You  will  look  after  him?  "  she  said  to  me,  hastily, 
while  I  was  waiting  for  him  in  the  hall,  one  evening. 
"I'm  glad  you  like  him."  And  she  added,  almost 
in  a  guilty  whisper,  "He's  a  dear  boy." 

[  190  ] 


PETER  QUALE 


She  was  still  a  handsome  woman,  younger  than 
her  husband,  but  with  a  nervously  apprehensive 
manner  and  a  painful  mouth.  (The  expression  of 
that  mouth  made  me  sympathize  with  Bob's  feeling 
toward  his  father.)  Her  time  appeared  to  be  wholly 
occupied  with  household  matters  and  the  meetings 
of  some  few  boards  of  charitable  aid.  The  house 
was  spotlessly  efficient,  though  old-fashioned.  Affairs 
of  house  cleaning  or  redecoration  or  repair  were  going 
on  in  some  corner  of  it  always,  under  her  supervision. 
I  thought  her  tragically  commonplace. 

I  saw  about  the  house  only  one  thing  that  seemed 
characteristic  of  old  P.  Q.  That  was  an  antique 
framed  motto  in  early  English  black  letter  on  his 
library  wall.  There  was  a  legend  that  it  had  been 
given  to  him  by  J.  P.  Morgan,  but  I  suspect  that 
he  treasured  it  for  the  sentiment  as  much  as  for  the 
association.  It  read: 

A  secret  that  is  known  to  one — 
A  secret  known  to  God  alone. 
A  secret  that  is  known  to  two — 
A  secret  known  to  God  knows  who. 

I  should  say  it  might  have  been  engraved  on  P. 
Q.'s  upper  lip. 

He  was  out  of  town  when  Bob  and  I  arrived;  and 
when  he  returned  he  was  absorbed  in  office  routine 
and  board  meetings  and  business  luncheons  and 
directors'  dinners  and  evening  conferences  of  one 
sort  or  another.  He  breakfasted  before  we  were  out 

[191] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

of  bed,  and  he  walked  early  to  his  office — in  the 
old  gas  building  on  Union  Square — with  a  secretary 
who  brought  him  his  mail  and  telegrams  at  seven. 
He  carried  a  heavy  walking  stick  because  he  had 
once  been  attacked  on  the  street,  and  he  limped 
from  a  twinge  of  rheumatism  in  the  knee,  on  the 
morning  that  I  saw  him,  but  his  carriage  was  other 
wise  erect  and  forceful,  and  the  defiant  poise  of  his 
head  and  shoulders  was  accentuated  by  the  rakish 
angle  at  which  he  wore  a  soft  hat  slanted  down  on 
his  eyebrows.  Even  at  a  distance  you  would  know 
he  was  "a  character." 

We  had  one  dinner  with  him — a  formal  family 
dinner  given  to  some  financiers  whose  names  I  have 
forgotten.  Among  them  there  was  a  Londoner  who 
represented  a  group  of  British  investors.  As  we 
went  in  to  the  table  Bob  whispered  to  me  that  this 
man  had  arrived  wearing  a  monocle,  and  old  P.  Q. 
had  growled  at  him,  "I  can't  talk  to  you  with  that 
damn  thing  in  your  eye."  And  the  Englishman  had 
been  so  surprised  that  the  glass  had  dropped  from 
his  eye  socket  and  he  had  not  put  it  back.  He  looked 
rather  bewildered  throughout  the  meal,  either  be 
cause  of  his  reception  or  because  the  lack  of  the 
monocle  affected  his  sight. 

The  others  had  an  air  of  suppressed  amusement. 
P.  Q.  was  dour  and  silent.  It  appeared  that  he  had 
been  to  Washington,  on  some  business  about  a  bill 
in  the  Senate  which  he  wished  to  have  passed.  It 
had  been  passed.  The  men  at  the  table,  congratu- 

[192] 


PETER  QUALE 


lating  him  on  his  success,  asked  him  what  arguments 
he  had  used.  "Arguments!"  he  grumbled.  "They 
knew  all  the  arguments.  Been  listening  to  argu 
ments  for  a  month.  I  hadn't  any  arguments.  I  just 
damned  it  through." 

The  others  accepted  the  opportunity  to  relieve  the 
laughter  which  they  had  been  restraining.  The  Eng 
lishman  seemed  more  bewildered  than  ever.  P.  Q. 
looked  up,  blinking  against  a  puckered  twinkle  of  the 
eyes.  For  a  moment  I  thought  that  he  was  going  to 
smile.  I  said  so,  under  jny  voice,  to  Bob.  He  nodded 
sourly.  "He's  getting  old,"  he  muttered.  "Losing 
his  self-control." 

His  mother  shook  her  head  at  him.  The  others  sat 
too  far  away  to  hear.  The  table  was  unnecessarily 
large,  in  a  room  so  vast  that  the  shaded  candlelight 
did  not  more  than  reach  the  walls.  It  was  a  warm 
spring;  the  house  was  overheated;  and  the  French 
windows  of  the  dining  room  had  been  opened  upon  a 
balcony.  With  the  night  air  drawing  in  on  us,  and  the 
candlelight  scarcely  showing  the  high  ceiling,  I  felt 
as  if  we  were  eating  outdoors  on  a  cloudy  night. 

The  talk  at  the  upper  end  of  the  table  ran  into  a 
discussion  of  the  attacks  that  were  being  made  by 
politicians  and  newspapers  upon  the  owners  of 
public  utilities.  I  listened  with  a  divided  mind, 
trying  to  picture  to  myself  what  life  must  look  like 
to  the  old  nabob  at  the  head  of  the  board.  A  large 
map  of  the  city  hung  in  his  library,  with  his  real- 
estate  holdings  marked  on  it  in  red,  and  his  street 

[193] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

railways  crawling  over  it  in  blue,  and  his  gas  pipes 
wriggling  through  it  in  yellow,  and  patches  of  his 
docks  and  car  barns  and  gas  tanks  all  over  it.  I  had 
been  wandering  around  town  with  Bob — who  was 
showing  me  the  sights — and  I  could  visualize  many 
of  these  colored  lines  and  patches  in  terms  of  build 
ings  and  constructions.  How  did  it  feel  to  live  in  a 
city  that  for  more  than  half  a  century  you  had  been 
erecting  as  you  would  a  house?  How  would  you 
feel  toward  the  successive  generations  of  tenants 
who  leased  the  house  from  you,  and  paid  you  rent, 
and  complained  of  exactions  and  inconveniences, 
and  now  suddenly  began  to  talk  as  if  it  was,  after 
all,  their  house  to  which  your  title  was  in  part  no 
more  than  "a  public  utility  franchise"? 

I  judged  that  you  would  feel  as  contemptuously 
indifferent  to  the  talk  as  old  P.  Q.'s  silence  indicated 
he  felt  while  he  ate  and  listened  to  the  men  before 
him.  Generations  of  tenants  had  passed  through  his 
streets  and  houses  as  passengers  got  on  and  off  his 
cars.  He  and  the  houses  and  the  cars  and  the  rails 
remained.  He  must  feel  as  permanent  and  solid  as 
his  properties.  And  as  secure. 

I  began  imagining  myself  in  P.  Q.'s  position,  at  the 
head  of  his  table,  owning  his  fortune,  enjoying  his 
security.  It  was  a  mighty  proud  and  comfortable 
feeling  of  solid  permanence  founded  on  brick  and 
stone  and  metal.  It  was  more  than  a  sense  of 
wealth  and  power.  I  felt  (in  the  person  of  P.  Q.) 
that  if  I  had  wanted  merely  wealth,  I  should  have 

[194] 


PETER  QUALE 


speculated  and  bought  stocks  and  not  confined  my 
holdings  entirely  to  tangible  assets  of  material  con 
struction.  And  if  I  had  been  ambitious  for  distinction 
and  power,  I  should  have  educated  myself  to  take  my 
place  among  cultivated  people,  and  put  on  a  silk  hat, 
and  been  undisturbed  before  a  monocle.  No.  What 
I  had  needed  was  security — from  that  very  first  day 
when  I  landed  friendless  at  Castle  Garden  and 
hastened  to  put  my  five  hundred  dollars  in  the  bank. 

Security.    Security  from  what? 

And  then  I  remembered  Bob  saying  that  his 
father  had  arrived  in  New  York  with  something  in 
his  past  that  he  wouldn't  talk  about;  and  I  saw 
myself  guiltily  banking  my  five  hundred,  and 
silently  entrenching  myself  in  the  ownership  of  land 
and  houses,  and  building  a  shell  of  property  around 
myself,  confiding  in  no  one,  talking  as  little  as 
possible,  afraid  of  people,  trying  to  intimidate  them 
because  I  was  afraid  of  them,  and  bristling  like  an 
old  dog  on  the  doorstep  of  my  personality,  on  my 
guard  against  any  intrusion,  even  an  affectionate 
intrusion,  so  that  even  my  wife 

I  must  have  been  staring  at  old  P.  Q.  with  an 
expression  of  hypnotized  clairvoyance,  for  when  he 
looked  down  the  table  and  saw  me  he  frowned,  and 
then  focused  on  me  a  queer,  startled  glare.  It  was  a 
look  that  lasted  only  an  instant  before  I  came  to  my 
self  and  caught  up  my  fork  and  busied  myself  with 
my  food.  But  during  that  instant  I  must  have  con 
fronted  him  with  the  eyes  of  astounded  speculation. 

[195] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

Bob  had  not  noticed  my  expression,  but  he  saw 
his  father's.  "  What  were  you  doing?  "  he  whispered. 
"Making  faces  at  him?" 

I  pretended  that  I  didn't  know.  "I  may  have 
been,"  I  said.  "I  was  looking  at  him  and  thinking 
of  something  else." 

He  giggled.  "You'll  be  sticking  out  your  tongue 
at  him  next." 

He  told  his  mother  that  I  had  "made  a  snoot" 
at  the  old  man,  and  he  stuck  to  his  story,  snickering 
hysterically,  in  the  face  of  her  distress.  It  was  a 
feeble  enough  joke,  and  his  pleasure  in  it  probably 
came  as  much  from  my  embarrassment  as  from  the 
fact  that  he  was  tickling  his  own  desire  to  cheek  his 
father.  He  invented  an  excuse  for  me.  He  said 
that  as  a  loyal  Colonial  I  resented  his  dad's  insult 
to  the  British  monocle.  Throughout  the  rest  of 
the  dinner  he  continued  snorting  and  choking  to 
himself.  When  we  got  to  his  room  he  laughed 
uproariously,  helpless  when  I  pummeled  him,  and 
wiping  his  eyes  weakly  between  his  convulsions. 
It  was  good  to  see  him  laugh. 

The  incident  seemed  insignificant  at  the  time.  It 
had  its  consequences. 

4 

That  same  evening  something  else  occurred  that 
might  have  interested  P.  Q.  more  than  my  uncom 
plimentary  conception  of  his  psychology — if  he  had 
known  of  either. 

[196] 


PETER  QUALE 


Bob  had  bought  tickets  for  "a  show,"  a  musical 
comedy,  if  I  remember,  at  the  old  Manhattan 
Theater  on  Broadway.  We  arrived  late,  and  it  was 
not  till  after  the  end  of  the  first  act  that  we  found 
the  name  of  Angela  Quayle  in  the  cast.  It  caught 
Bob's  eye,  of  course.  And  during  the  second  act 
we  amused  ourselves  trying  to  decide  which  of  the 
chorus  Angela  Quayle  might  be.  We  got  no  clue. 

There  was  a  red-headed  soprano  who  had  a  small 
part  among  the  principals.  "I  used  to  know  her," 
Bob  volunteered.  (Her  name  was  Dolly  something 
or  other — Dolly  Varley,  let  us  say.)  At  the  end  of 
the  act,  he  said:  "I'm  going  to  find  out  from  her 
which  is  Angela  Quayle.  Wait  here  a  minute." 

The  third  act  was  well  under  way  before  he  re 
turned,  and  he  had  not  only  found  out  which  was 
Angela  Quayle;  he  had  invited  her  and  Dolly  Varley 
to  supper  after  the  theater.  I  felt  very  much  the 
young  man  about  town.  He  whispered:  "I  told 
them  you  were  a  Canadian  playwright  down  here 
seeing  the  managers.  You'll  have  to  live  up  to 
that."  It  was  a  part  that  rather  went  to  my  head. 

Angela  Quayle  proved  to  be  a  tall,  dark  girl, 
graceful  and  demure.  She  did  not  try  to  see  us 
across  the  footlights,  but  Dolly  Varley  found  us  in 
the  third  row,  and  smiled  at  Bob,  and  then  took  me 
in  with  an  absent-minded  scrutiny  while  she  sang. 
I  strove  to  look  unconscious  of  my  importance,  and 
still  look  important.  I  think  I  failed. 

Fortunately    for    the    professional    standing    of 

[197] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

Canadian  playwrights,  Bob  knew  the  etiquette  of 
stage  doors  and  the  passport  for  doorkeepers;  and 
we  met  the  girls  conveniently,  at  the  foot  of  the 
dressing-room  stairs,  in  the  wings  of  a  stripped 
stage;  and  they  did  not  ask  the  names  of  any  of 
the  managers  whom  I  had  been  seeing.  They  were 
not  interested  in  me  at  all,  in  fact.  Before  the 
affair  was  ended,  I  understood  thoroughly  that  a 
provincial  dramatic  author,  quite  unproduced,  was 
not  a  prize  behind  the  scenes — certainly  not  when 
he  was  in  social  competition  with  an  heir  of  the 
Quale  millions. 

Dolly  Varley  proved  to  be  older  than  she  had 
looked  in  her  stage  role,  and  both  she  and  Angela 
were  quietly  dressed  and  matter-of-fact  in  manner. 
They  confessed  to  being  hungry,  and  voted  to  go 
to  a  neighboring  rathskeller  for  something  hearty 
to  eat.  The  expedition  rapidly  lost  the  air  of  an 
adventure.  They  behaved  as  sedately  as  any  two 
intelligent  girls  who  earn  their  own  livings  and  are 
economically  independent  of  the  need  of  coquetry. 
I  began  to  see  that  I  had  been  deceived  by  the 
traditions  of  fiction  in  the  matter  of  actresses. 

And  I  began  to  see,  too,  that  Bob  had  arranged 
the  party  not  merely  for  his  amusement  or  mine. 
He  wanted  to  know  where  Angela  Quayle  had  come 
by  her  name.  Was  it  a  stage  name  only? 

Well,  her  real  name  was  Angela  Priestly,  but 
Quayle  was  her  mother's  maiden  name. 

Where  had  they  come  from? 

[198] 


PETER  QUALE 


Her  mother  had  come  from  England,  but  she  had 
married  in  this  country. 

He  began  to  show  some  excitement.  "Isn't  she 
Manx?  Didn't  she  come  from  the  Isle  of  Man?  " 

Why? 

"Well,"  Bob  said,  "if  she  did,  I'll  bet  you're 
relatives  of  ours." 

She  smiled  at  his  seriousness.  "It  wouldn't  do 
me  any  good  if  we  were,  would  it?" 

"Yes,"  he  answered,  unexpectedly.  "It  might. 
Find  out  for  me,  will  you?  I  mean  it." 

"Oh,  very  well,"  she  said. 

She  made  no  more  of  it  than  that,  and  I  did  not 
hear  Bob  refer  to  the  matter  again;  but  when  we  had 
taken  the  girls  to  their  addresses  and  we  were  driving 
home  together  in  a  hansom — which  was  Bob's  con 
stant  ideal  of  bachelor  luxury — I  asked  him  whether 
he  really  thought  she  might  be  a  relative ;  and  he  said : 
"I  don't  know.  I  hope  so.  I  like  her.  Don't  you?" 

I  liked  her  well  enough. 

"Rotten  shame,"  he  said,  "a  girl  like  that  working 
in  the  chorus.  I'll  bet  she's  had  a  tough  time." 

I  regretted  he'd  told  her  I  was  a  playwright. 

W7hy? 

"Why!  Because  she's  been  as  silent  about  it  as 
if  you'd  told  her — I  don't  know  what!" 

Bob  laughed.  "She  was  probabJy  afraid  you'd 
pull  a  manuscript  out  of  your  pocket  and  try  to  read 
her  a  first  act." 

It  seemed  to  him  a  good  joke.    When  he  saw  that 

f  199] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

I  was  really  surly  about  it,  he  promised,  "The  next 
time  I  see  her  I'll  tell  her  the  truth." 

And  that  incident  had  its  consequences,  also. 


He  did  not  see  her  again  during  my  visit,  and  he 
said  nothing  about  her  when  he  rejoined  me  in 
our  classes  at  the  university.  If  I  knew  that  he 
was  corresponding  with  her,  it  made  so  little  impres 
sion  on  me  that  I  have  forgotten  it.  I  was  busy 
trying  to  prepare  myself  for  the  approaching  dooms 
day  of  examinations.  He  announced  suddenly  that 
he  was  done  with  exams,  with  college,  with  the  whole 
silly  cram  that  was  called  education.  I  did  not 
connect  her  with  his  decision.  I  supposed  that  it 
was  simply  the  revolt  of  the  idle  rich  against  intel 
lectual  labor.  He  was  more  than  usually  restless, 
impatient,  contemptuous,  and  unhappy.  He  came 
to  me  in  the  library  one  sunny  morning. 

"Good-by,"  he  said.  "I'm  going.  I'm  packed." 
And  he  said  it  loudly,  so  as  to  show  his  scorn  for  the 
regulations  that  required  silence  in  the  reading  room. 

Several  students  near  us  turned  and  hissed, 
"  Ssh ! "  angrily.  He  invited  them  to  mind  their  own 
driveling  business,  in  a  voice  that  was  audible  to 
the  whole  world.  All  the  free  spirits  in  the  neigh 
borhood  accepted  that  as  a  challenge  to  an  inter 
change  of  insults.  An  indignant  hubbub  arose. 
The  desk  clerk  rapped  in  vain  for  order.  I  hurried 

[200] 


PETER  QTJALE 


Bob  out  to  the  hall,  through  a  small  riot  of  catcalls 
and  hisses,  to  which  he  kept  replying  in  spite  of  my 
attempts  to  hush  him  as  we  went.  We  were  over 
taken  at  the  door  by  an  angry  attendant  with  a 
summons  to  the  librarian's  office.  Bob  replied  that 
the  librarian  could  go  to  bottomless  perdition,  as 
far  as  he  was  concerned,  and  walked  out.  It  was 
not  so  simple  a  situation  for  me.  I  had  an  un 
comfortable  half  hour,  trying  to  clear  myself  some 
what,  without  putting  all  the  blame  on  Bob.  I 
escaped  with  a  week's  suspension  from  the  privileges 
of  the  library,  and  I  hurried  off  to  Bob's  room. 

He  was  gone. 

He  wrote  apologetically  from  the  train  and  again 
when  he  reached  New  York;  but  I  was  too  busy  to 
reply,  and  I  was  still  peevish  about  the  scene  in  the 
library,  and  I  was  also  glad  to  have  him  off  my  mind. 
When  the  exams  were  over  I  had  problems  of  my 
own  to  face,  though  they  were  not  at  all  the  prob 
lems  that  would  worry  a  millionaire's  son.  In  the 
silence  that  came  between  us  I  got  no  hint  of  the 
events  that  were  preparing. 

Then  he  wrote,  reminding  me  of  our  conversa 
tions  about  the  impossibility  of  making  a  living  as 
a  writer  in  Canada,  and  inviting  me  to  try  a  pre 
liminary  attack  on  New  York  from  the  hospitality  of 
his  rooms.  "Have  something  important  to  tell 
you,"  he  explained.  "Very  important.  Need  your 
advice."  New  York,  however,  had  frightened  me; 
and  even  when  his  mother  wrote,  obviously  at  his 

[201] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

instigation,  I  shivered,  in  reluctant  refusal,  and 
hung  back. 

There  was  another  long  silence.  I  spent  part  of 
it  day  dreaming  scenes  in  which  I  bluffed  a  Park 
Row  editor  into  giving  me  a  summer  try-out  in  his 
city  room  on  the  strength  of  the  fact  that  I  had 
written  verses  for  the  college  paper — some  of  which 
the  paper  had  published.  I  did  not  succeed  in 
making  the  scenes  quite  credible.  Bob  wrote  that 
he  was  in  trouble  and  needed  my  aid.  That  settled 
it.  I  decided  that  I  would  not  go ;  that  I  had  troubles 
enough  where  I  was.  And  having  triumphed  over 
temptation  in  this  decision,  and  convinced  myself 
of  my  essential  strength  of  character,  when  Mrs. 
Quale  wired:  "Please  come.  He  needs  you," 
naturally  I  packed  my  trunk  and  went  at  once. 

Bob  met  me  in  the  ferryhouse  at  Twenty-third 
Street.  In  the  cab  he  told  me  that  he  intended  to 
marry  Angela  Quayle.  And  while  I  was  still  in  a 
confusion  of  doubtful  congratulations,  he  announced 
that  P.  Q.'s  father,  who  had  died  at  sea,  and  Angela's 
grandmother,  who  had  been  abandoned  on  the  Isle 
of  Man,  were  husband  and  wife.  And  when  I 
objected  that  he  could  hardly  marry  his  father's 
niece,  he  said,  coldly :  "I'm  not  his  son.  I've  known 
it  for  years." 

6 

If  I  have  failed  to  give  the  quality  of  a  dramatic 
denouement  to  these  astounding  statements,  it  is 

[202] 


PETER  QUALE 


because  there  was  no  true  dramatic  quality  what 
ever  in  the  scene.  It  was  casual  and  self-conscious 
and  distracted.  Bob  had  a  manner  of  bitter  indiffer 
ence  to  what  he  was  saying;  and  when  he  said,  "I'm 
not  his  son,"  he  leaned  forward  to  look  out  the  cab 
window,  at  men  working  in  the  street,  before  he 
added,  "I've  known  it  for  years."  I  was  staring  at 
him,  at  once  stupefied  and  incredulous.  He  looked 
at  me  challengingly.  I  looked  away,  but  not  before 
I  saw  that  his  manner  was  assumed  in  order  to 
conceal  emotion. 

"Well,"  I  decided,  "this  is  a  sweet  mess." 

He  made  a  sound  in  his  nose  that  was  probably 
intended  to  be  an  amused  snort  of  disgusted  agree 
ment.  "Besides,"  he  said,  "he's  dying." 

66 Who9 s  dying?" 

"The  old  man." 

"Good  heavens!    I  haven't  seen  anything " 

"No.  They've  given  it  out  that  he  has  rheuma 
tism.  It's  neuralgia  of  the  heart.  Angina  pectoris. 
He's  likely  to  pop  off  any  minute." 

The  cab  rattled  and  jolted  along,  with  sudden 
jerks  and  traffic  stoppages.  I  felt  that  if  we  could 
only  be  stationary  and  quiet  somewhere  for  a 
moment,  I  might  realize  the  situation  sufficiently  to 
say  something  adequate  and  think  of  something 
helpful.  We  dropped  a  back  wheel  into  a  hole  in 
the  pavement  just  as  I  began,  "This  is  awful " 

"Town's  always  torn  up  in  the  summer,"  he 
apologized.  "Mending  pavements." 

14  [  203  ] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

"I  mean  it's  awful  for  your  mother." 

"Oh."    He  nodded. 

I  could  think  of  nothing  more  to  say. 

"I  haven't  told  her  practically  anything — except 
that  I  want  to  marry  Angela." 

If  I  had  had  any  sense  at  all,  I  might  have  de 
manded  some  convincing  proofs  of  his  statements. 
How  did  he  know  that  he  was  not  P.  Q.'s  son?  How 
had  he  learned  that  P.  Q.  and  his  father  had  run 
away  and — did  he  mean  that  the  five  hundred 
dollars  with  which  P.  Q.  had  landed  was  guilty 
money? 

I  got  up  courage  at  last  to  ask  him  that. 

He  said:  "I  suppose  so.  They  left  her  in  poverty 
there,  with  a  child — Angela's  mother.  She  never 
heard  of  either  of  them  afterward.  If  he  weren't 
dying  I'd  go  to  him  and  make  him  fork  out  for  her. 
He's  not  likely  to  leave  me  much.  And  the  other 
two  will  never  give  up  anything.  And  I  can't  tell 
mother  about  it.  I  don't  want  her  to  know  he's 
been — that  kind  of — "  He  choked  up. 

He  choked  up,  and  suddenly,  in  the  midst  of  my 
horror  and  my  sympathy,  I  found  myself  filled 
with  an  outrageous  sense  of  exultation.  To  put  it 
too  flatly,  I  felt  that  life,  after  all,  could  be  worthy  of 
an  author!  I  felt  like  a  student  of  landscape  paint 
ing  who  had  stumbled  on  a  scene  that  was  in  the 
colors  of  Turner  really.  And  I  struggled  to  repress 
the  feeling,  with  disgust,  in  silence,  dazzled  by  the 
bright  romantic  glamour  of  a  guilty  fortune,  an 

[204] 


PETER  QUALE 


illegitimate  heir,  an  erring  wife,  a  whole  plot  of  old 
crimes  discovered  on  a  deathbed.  How  stranger 
than  fiction!  And  how  dramatically  elucidative  of 
everything  that  had  puzzled  me  about  the  family — 
P.  Q.'s  pursuit  of  security,  Bob's  revolt  and  his 
unhappiness,  the  absence  of  all  brotherly  affection, 
the  division  in  the  house,  the  mother's  painful 
mouth.  It  seemed  that  I  had  penetrated  to  the 
old  man's  criminal  secret,  that  evening  at  dinner. 
I  began  even  to  believe  that  he  must  have  seen  the 
accusation  in  my  eyes  and  been  disturbed  by  it. 

I  was  recalled  to  the  immediate  realities  by  the 
sight  of  Gramercy  Park.  What  was  I  to  say?  How 
was  I  to  behave?  How,  especially,  was  I  to  face 
Mrs.  Quale? 

I  said  to  Bob:  "Don't  let  your  mother  know  I'm 
here  yet.  I  want  to  talk  this  over  with  you  before 
I  see  her."  By  which  I  meant  that  I  wanted  to 
conspire  with  him  in  the  inventing  of  some  plau 
sible  untruth  with  which  to  deceive  her.  Accord 
ingly,  we  sneaked  up  to  his  rooms  and  locked 
ourselves  in.  And  there,  with  him  sunken  in  a  large 
and  melancholy-looking  armchair  while  I  walked 
up  and  down  portentously  before  him,  we  went  over' 
and  over  the  perplexities  of  his  tragic  situation. 

He  wanted  to  marry  Angela  Quayle.  Well,  since 
there  was  no  real  relationship  between  them,  he 
might  do  so.  But  he  had  told  his  mother  of  his 
love  affair  under  solemn  pledge  of  secrecy;  she  had 
been  horrified  at  the  thought  of  his  marrying  a 

[205] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

chorus  girl,  and  site  had  kept  his  secret  only  because 
she  knew  that  if  his  father  learned  of  it  he  might  be 
disinherited.  His  father  was  already  sufficiently 
dissatisfied  with  him.  It  was  unlikely  that  Bob 
would  receive  any  large  share  of  the  estate.  Most 
likely  he  would  be  provided  with  a  small  allowance 
from  a  trust  fund,  to  be  administered  by  his 
brothers.  At  best,  then,  if  he  waited  for  his  in 
heritance  he  would  be  able  to  offer  Angela  Quayle 
only  a  niggardly  incomplete  rectification  of  the 
injustice  that  had  been  done  her  mother  and  her. 

And  Bob  had  achieved  a  far  from  niggardly  moral 
magnification  of  that  injustice.  The  Quale  fortune 
had  begun  with  P.  Q.'s  five  hundred  dollars  in  the 
bank.  This  money  had  been  as  good  as  stolen. 
P.  Q/s  sister  and  his  sister's  child  were  entitled  to  a 
sum  that  should  not  only  make  restitution — with 
fifty  years'  compound  interest — but  recompense 
them  for  a  lifetime  of  poverty,  and  so  absolve  P.  Q. 
from  his  accumulated  guilt.  Good.  But  if  Bob 
were  to  put  in  his  claim  for  them  he  would  have  to 
prove  who  they  were.  And  if  he  proved  that,  how 
was  he  to  marry  Angela?  How  was  he  to  marry  her 
without  coming  out  openly  as  no  son  of  P.  Q.? 
Imagine  the  effect  of  such  a  bomb!  He  could  not 
face  it.  He  could  not  even  face  the  dying  man  with 
the  accusation  about  the  five  hundred  dollars.  He 
could  only  stew  around,  and  suffer  horribly,  arid 
agonize  with  shame  and  guilt  and  disillusionment. 

Put  down  this  way,   in  more  or  less  coherent 

[206] 


PETER  QUALE 


sentences,  the  muddle  seems  intricate  enough.  But 
it  was  much  more  bewildering  as  I  tried  to  arrange  it 
in  my  mind  from  Bob's  jumbled  mass  of  discon 
nected  mutterings  and  exclamations  of  emotion  and 
brooding  silences  that  ended  in  irrelevant  replies 
when  I  was  trying  to  get  clear  answers  to  my  ques 
tions  about  the  facts.  For  instance,  when  I  dared  to 
ask  him,  in  embarrassed  indirectness,  how  he  had 
learned  that  he  was  not  P.  Q.'s  son,  he  replied,  with 
reserve:  "I've  always  known  it.  Since  I  was  six 
years  old.  I  overheard  her  say  it.  She  was  crying 
about  something.  She  said — she  said  she  was  glad 
of  it."  And  that  was  as  definite  as  he  would  be. 

Of  the  relationship  between  P.  Q.'s  father  and 
Angela's  grandmother,  he  said:  "There's  no  doubt 
about  it.  Angela's  grandfather  was  a  tailor.  He 
took  his  son,  and  ran  away,  and  left  them  to  starve. 
When  I  found  that  out  I  said  to  mother,  'Grand 
father  was  a  tailor,  wasn't  he?'  She  looked  star 
tled.  She  wanted  to  know  where  I'd  heard  it.  She 
admitted  it  was  true.  There's  something  else  be 
sides.  I  don't  want  to  talk  about  it." 

At  the  end  of  an  hour  I  had  to  accept  the  situation 
as  he  saw  it.  And,  accepting  it,  the  question  was, 
what  was  he  to  do?  What  would  I  advise  him  to  do? 
He  had  told  no  one  but  me.  He  had  not  even  told 
Angela.  And  I  could  see  no  sailing  course  whatever 
for  him.  I  could  see  nothing  but  the  rocks  and  the 
shoals  and  the  dangerous  cross-currents  and  the 
certainties  of  shipwreck.  The  best  I  could  do  was 

[207] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

to  hold  him  back.  And  I  was  still  holding  him  when 
his  mother  sent  word  that  she  wished  to  see  me. 

"Look  here,  Bob,"  I  said,  'Til  tell  her  you're 
worrying  because  you  want  to  marry  Angela  and 
you've  found  out  something  that  makes  it  impossi 
ble.  And  I've  promised  not  to  tell  anybody  what 
it  is." 

That  seemed  innocently  ingenious. 


It  was  not  ingenious  enough  to  satisfy  Mrs.  Quale. 
She  studied  me  anxiously,  waiting,  reserving  her 
suspicion  till  I  had  finished.  Then  she  asked,  "Why 
is  he  behaving  this  way  with  his  father?" 

"What  way?" 

"Refusing  to  see  him." 

I  tried  to  look  blank,  without  blushing. 

"He  hasn't  gone  to  him  since  he  was  brought 
home.  Peter  wanted  him  to  play  checkers  one 
night,  and  he  ran  away,  out  of  the  house." 

I  shook  my  head,  to  express  ignorance,  looking 
down  at  the  floor. 

"And  he's  drinking,"  she  said,  hoarsely,  "with 
his  father  dying.  It's  terrible.  He's  not  a  bad  boy. 
There's  something  the  matter.  And  no  one  will 
tell  me." 

She  was  entirely  pitiful,  and  that  surprised  me. 
Perhaps  I  had  expected  to  feel  some  moral  disappro 
bation  of  her  as  the  guilty  victim  of  her  own  trans- 

[208] 


PETER  QUALE 


gression.  I  was  so  moved  that  I  could  only  stammer : 
"I — I'm  awfully  sorry.  I  can  keep  him  from 
drinking." 

"I  don't  understand  him,"  she  said.  "I  don't 
understand  any  of  them.  They're  all  so  queer.  And 
he's  dying.  They  don't  seem  to  realize  it." 

I  glanced  at  her  furtively.  She  was  staring  ahead 
of  her,  at  nothing,  blinded  by  her  tears,  her  eyebrows 
twitching  in  a  pathetic  sort  of  bewildered  frown. 
It  was  a  childish  expression,  helpless,  inadequate. 
I  could  not  endure  it.  I  ran  away.  I  left  her 
without  any  apology  and  hurried  back  to  Bob. 

"All  right,"  I  said,  wiping  my  forehead.  " That  '11 
give  us  time  to  turn  round.  Now  listen.  You'll 
have  to  tell  your  brothers,  sometime — your  eldest 
brother,  anyway.  He'll  be  the  head  of  the  family 
when — if  the  estate's  left  to  him,  and  it's  sure  to  be. 
He'll  feel  the  way  you  do  about  this.  He'll  want 
to  keep  it  from  your  mother  as  much  as  you 
do.  And  he'll  not  risk  telling  it  to  a  man  with  heart 
disease.  Why  not  try  him  out — with  the  part  about 
Angela,  anyway?  Perhaps  if  you  can  make  him 
feel  that  there  may  be  a  public  scandal,  a  law  suit 
or  something — I  don't  know.  They  have  some 
sort  of  legal  claim,  haven't  they?  And  even 
if  they  haven't,  they've  a  moral  claim,  and  you 
can  insist  on  it  yourself.  It's  the  only  opening 
that  I  can  see.  You'll  have  to  begin  somewhere, 
you  know." 

I  was  not  very  clear  about  it  at  first,  but  the  more 

[209] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

we  talked  the  clearer  it  became.  P.  Q.  was  dying, 
and  no  one  wished  to  make  trouble  for  him;  but 
Angela  and  her  mother  had  a  claim  on  the  estate, 
and  unless  something  could  be  done  for  them,  all 
kinds  of  public  scandal  might  ensue.  It  was  John 
Quale's  duty  to  handle  the  problem  tactfully,  diplo 
matically,  without  worrying  his  father  about  it  and 
without  exposing  his  father's  guilty  past  to  anybody 
else.  Bob  need  not  speak  of  his  own  interest  in 
Angela.  Still  less  need  he  disclose  "the  secret  of  his 
birth,"  as  you  might  say.  He  could  be  quite  dis 
interested,  rather  dutiful,  and  only  concerned  to 
save  his  father's  good  name.  r 

By  the  time  we  had  eaten  a  restaurant  luncheon 
together — conspiring  like  a  pair  of  amateur  black 
mailers  at  a  table  in  a  corner — we  had  persuaded 
ourselves  that  our  scheme  was  Machiavellian.  Bob 
phoned  to  catch  his  brother  in  his  office.  I  saw  him 
start  on  his  way  to  the  interview,  pale  but  un 
flinching;  and  I  went  back  to  his  rooms  to  wait  for 
news  of  his  success. 

The  house  was  hushed  and  guarded,  with  a  door 
keeper  to  see  that  no  one  rang  the  bell  and  a  secre 
tary  to  winnow  out  callers  in  an  anteroom.  P.  Q. 
was  conducting  his  affairs  from  his  sickbed,  and 
there  was  a  noiseless  coming  and  going  of  messen 
gers  and  confidential  clerks  and  business  associates 
from  his  side  of  the  house;  but  Mrs.  Quale  had 
refused  herself  to  all  visitors,  and  there  was  no  one 
to  be  seen  in  her  apartments  but  a  silent  butler  in 

[210] 


PETER  QUALE 


the  entrance  hall.  P.  Q.  for  more  than  a  month  had 
endured  an  intermittent  pain  in  his  breast  without 
speaking  of  it.  He  had  ignored  it  as  he  ignored  his 
rheumatism  or  anything  else  that  tried  to  interfere 
with  his  having  his  own  way  in  the  world.  Then, 
one  morning,  arriving  at  his  office,  he  had  been  taken 
with  a  seizure  so  violent  that  he  had  collapsed 
breathless  in  his  chair  and  sunk  face  down  on  his 
desk  blotter.  His  physician,  hastily  summoned, 
had  recognized  the  fatal  symptoms  of  angina  pec- 
toris.  P.  Q.  had  been  brought  back  to  his  home, 
grimly  silent,  and  put  in  his  bed.  The  doctor  had 
told  him  the  truth.  He  had  taken  it  without  blink 
ing.  He  had  not  referred  to  it,  himself,  since,  and 
none  of  his  family  had  dared  to  speak  openly  to  him 
about  it.  He  had  acted — and  he  continued  to  act — 
on  the  fiction  that  he  was  bedridden  with  rheuma 
tism,  and  everyone  on  his  side  of  the  house  either 
accepted,  or  pretended  to  accept,  his  repudiation  of 
the  truth.  It  was  only  in  our  half  of  the  establish 
ment  that  the  lurking  presence  of  death  was  not 
altogether  snubbed  and  discountenanced. 

This  annoyed  me.  It  may  have  been  that  I  did 
not  like  to  think  of  P.  Q.  lording  it  over  his  mor 
tality.  Or  perhaps  I  had  the  artistic  feeling  that 
death  should  have  been  received  on  the  scene  with 
Shakespearean  emotions  and  the  gestures  of  drama 
— not  told  to  sit  down  a  minute  and  wait,  like  a 
needy  visitor,  till  P.  Q.  had  finished  with  more  im 
portant  matters.  I  began  to  be  afraid  that  even 

[211] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

Bob's  iridescent  tragedy  might  get  itself  pricked 
and  exploded  if  it  came  under  this  old  man's  un 
daunted  eye.  If  he  could  wave  death  aside  and 
keep  it  sitting,  unnoticed  by  everybody,  in  the  very 
corner  of  his  bedroom,  how  easily  might  he  not 
order  these  other  dusty  skeletons  back  into  their 
cupboards  and  lock  them  up. 

I  escaped  the  thought  by  taking  a  Victorian 
novel  from  Bob's  bookshelves  and  getting  into  a 
world  where  death  and  dishonor  and  contested  wills 
and  illegitimate  children  were  the  essentially  im 
portant  materials  of  life,  not  public  utilities  and 
affairs  of  finance  and  the  business  for  which  old 
P.  Q.  kept  death  and  repentance  waiting.  I  must 
admit,  however,  that  I  fell  asleep  over  the  book, 
and  I  could  not  have  fallen  asleep  over  P.  Q. 

I  woke  to  find  the  room  darkening,  and  Bob  had 
not  returned.  Belowstairs,  nothing  had  been  heard 
of  him.  I  phoned  his  brother's  office.  No  answer. 
The  office  was  closed.  I  left  word  with  the  butler 
not  to  expect  us  for  dinner,  and  I  sallied  out  to  find 
him.  There  was  no  trace  of  his  trail  in  any  of  his 
favorite  haunts  on  Broadway.  No  one  had  seen  him 
there.  The  butler  kept  replying  over  the  phone  that 
no  message  had  come  from  him.  I  began  to  suspect 
that  our  plans  had  crashed.  The  consequent  sinking 
feeling  reminded  me  that  I  had  had  no  dinner.  I 
ate  hastily  at  a  quick-lunch  counter,  and  depression 
settled  on  my  center  of  digestion  in  a  conviction  of 
impending  disaster.  I  caught  at  the  final  hope  that 

[212] 


PETER  QUALE 


Bob  might  go  to  see  Angela  Quayle,  whose  musical 
comedy  was  still  resisting  heat  prostration  at  the 
Manhattan.  I  could  not  get  past  the  doorkeeper. 
I  had  to  write  a  message  to  her  and  send  it  in.  The 
messenger  came  back  with  a  curt:  "Nope.  Hasn't 
seen  'm."  I  wandered  back  to  Broadway  and  stood 
at  a  loss  on  the  curb. 

In  those  days,  on  the  corner  of  Thirty-fourth 
Street  and  Broadway,  there  was  a  drug  store.  A 
number  of  people  had  gathered  in  front  of  it  to 
watch  a  hansom  cab,  its  driver,  and  its  occupant. 
I  supposed  that  they  were  all  enjoying  an  orthodox 
squabble  over  the  cab  fare.  I  heard  laughter,  real 
laughter,  pleased  and  gleeful.  I  stared  at  them 
dismally.  And  then  I  saw  a  familiar  figure  back 
out  of  the  cab.  And  it  was  Bob. 

As  I  hurried  toward  him  he  climbed  the  wheel  to 
reach  the  driver,  and  I  supposed  he  was  about  to 
pull  the  man  out  of  his  seat.  Not  so.  The  cabby 
was  grinning  and  the  bystanders  were  in  a  roar. 
What  was  it?  What  was  he  doing?  I  elbowed  my 
way  into  the  crowd.  He  was  spraying  the  man  with 
perfume  from  an  atomizer.  I  could  smell  it. 

I  watched  him,  dumfounded.  He  lurched  down 
from  the  wheel,  sprayed  it,  and  went  forward  to  the 
horse.  He  began  at  the  hoof  of  a  hind  leg  and  pro 
ceeded  spraying  solemnly  up  the  leg  to  the  flank, 
across  the  barrel  of  the  body  to  the  shoulder,  down 
the  foreleg  to  the  hoof,  up  again  to  the  neck 

By  this  time,  everybody  was  in  hysterics,  and 

[2131 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

such  a  mob  had  gathered  that  I  foresaw  the  arrival 
of  the  police.    I  fought  my  way  in  to  him. 

"Here,  Bob,"  I  said,  "what  're  you  doing?" 

He  looked  at  me  unsteadily.  *  'S  rodden  world," 
he  muttered.  "Dole  like  smell." 

He  returned  to  his  business  of  reforming  his 
environment  with  rose  water.  His  audience  en 
couraged  him  with  squeals  of  delight. 

"The  police  will  be  here  in  a  minute."    I  pleaded. 
"Quit  this,  for  heaven's  sake." 
.    He  mumbled  that  the  police  could  go 

"That's  all  right  for  you,"  I  said,  "but  you're 
going  to  get  me  into  trouble  again.  It  '11  be  the 
privileges  of  Broadway  that  I'll  lose,  this  time. 
They'll  put  me  in  jail." 

It  was  a  lucky  allusion  to  the  fracas  in  the  college 
library.  He  evidently  remembered  that  incident, 
and  his  flight  from  it,  with  shame.  "'  'S  aw  right, 
o*  man,"  he  said.  "No  'fense?  Li'F  nice  perf'm. 
Whas-matter?" 

"It's  not  allowed  on  Broadway,"  I  complained. 
"That's  what's  the  matter.  It's  against  the  law. 
They'll  arrest  us." 

"Lei — less  beat  it,"  he  said,  anxiously.  "Whur's 
cab?  Y'all  packed,  o'  man?" 

"Here."  I  took  the  atomizer  from  him  and 
helped  him  to  the  step  of  the  hansom.  He  got  in 
with  superhuman  difficulty.  I  said  to  the  cabby, 
"Drive  us  around  Central  Park  for  a  few  hours." 

He  winked  and  flourished  his  whip.    "Now  then, 

[214] 


PETER  QUALE 


my  Christian  fr'en's,"  he  called,  jerking  up  his 
horse,  "stan'  back  off  this  here  flower  bed.  Giddap, 
honey-bunch,  er  the  bees  '11  get  yah!" 

8 

We  left  the  laughter  behind  us.  We  did  not  leave 
the  perfume.  Bob  had  evidently  sprayed  himself 
and  the  interior  of  the  cab  liberally  before  I  arrived. 
And  that  endless  drive  sticks  in  my  memory  as  a 
sickeningly  sweet  stench  and  a  maddening  inco 
herence  of  befuddled  babble  and  an  anxiety  that 
sat  on  my  chest  like  a  bad  dream.  What  had 
happened? 

It  was  impossible  to  make  out.  All  I  could  gather 
was  Bob's  philosophic  opinion  that  the  world  was 
vile  and  that  his  brother  John  was  one  of  its  centers 
of  corruption.  "Rodden,"  he  kept  saying.  "  Mind's 
rodden.  Money's  rodden."  And  every  now  and 
then  he  would  giggle  and  say  something  that 
sounded  like  "Thinks  I'm  crazy."  Outside  of  that 
he  was  only  interested  in  finding  the  next  sa 
loon,  and  we  were  designedly  unable  to  come  on 
one  in  Central  Park.  The  interminable  procession 
of  drive  lights  and  tree  trunks  tired  him  out.  "Los* 
T  a  fores',"  he  complained,  wearily.  "Li'P  babes 
T  a  wood."  He  began  to  weep.  He  fell  asleep 
against  my  shoulder. 

We  drove  round  and  round  till  midnight. 

I  had  intended  to  keep  him  in  the  cab  until  he 

[215] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

sobered,  but  I  had  not  too  much  money  in  my 
pockets,  and  when  I  could  find  none  in  his  I  had  to 
direct  the  driver  to  take  us  home.  There  was  no 
possibility  of  disputing  the  fare.  I  gave  the  cabby 
all  the  money  that  I  had  in  the  world,  and  he  took 
it,  sniffingly,  as  a  poor  thing,  but  his  own. 

Bob  had  wakened  in  a  solemn  stupor,  but  with 
some  realization  of  where  he  was,  and  he  mounted 
the  steps  to  the  door  gravely,  but  in  a  heavy  sea. 
The  butler  had  waited  up  for  him  with  a  message 
that  his  father  wanted  to  see  him  as  soon  as  he  came 
in.  He  waved  the  man  aside,  intent  on  the  absorb 
ing  uncertainties  of  his  locomotion.  We  guided  him 
upstairs  to  his  rooms.  Fortunately,  the  steps  were 
so  padded  that  we  might  all  have  rolled  down  the 
two  flights  together  and  made  no  more  noise  than 
a  galumping  cat.  We  got  him  into  his  sitting  room, 
but  he  planted  himself  in  an  armchair  there  and 
refused  to  go  any  farther. 

"His  father  can't  see  him  in  this  state,"  I  said. 

The  butler  stood  over  him,  distressed,  with  a  nose 
that  judged  and  condemned  him.  The  perfume  was 
vulgar  and  without  shame,  even  before  a  butler. 
He  opened  a  window  and  left  us  to  air. 

Bob  fell  asleep  again.  I  sat  down  to  smoke,  like 
a  man  at  the  end  of  a  hard  day,  and  then  the  butler 
returned  with  word  that  old  P.  Q.  wanted  to  see  me. 

This  was  as  unexpected  as  if  I  had  been  suddenly 
called  on  to  come  out  from  behind  the  scenery  of  a 
stage  play  and  take  a  part  before  the  audience. 

[216] 


PETER  QUALE 


"Me?"  I  said.  "What  does  lie  want  to  see  me 
for?" 

The  butler  did  not  trouble  himself  to  reply.  He 
regarded  Bob  with  pained  disapproval. 

I  asked,  weakly,  "Where  is  he?" 

He  said,  "I'll  take  you  to  him." 

He  led  me  downstairs,  and  across  the  hall  to 
P.  Q.'s  deserted  reception  room,  and  upstairs  again 
to  a  slatted  summer  door  that  looked  like  an  inside 
shutter.  He  turned  the  knob  noiselessly  and  said, 
"Go  in."  I  entered  in  darkness. 

I  had  made  up  my  mind  to  say  that  I  knew 
nothing,  that  I  had  had  no  part  in  the  affair,  that 
I  had  only  just  arrived  in  town.  And  with  this 
determined,  I  had  foreseen  myself,  in  a  conspicu 
ously  lighted  moment,  making  a  discreet,  if  awk 
ward,  bow  to  the  tragedy  and  backing  out.  The 
darkness  upset  my  rehearsal.  It  was  some  time 
before  I  made  out  that  I  was  in  a  dimly  lighted 
room  with  a  large  screen  in  front  of  me. 

When  I  came  around  the  screen  I  saw  the  bedside 
lamp,  the  white  pillows,  and,  upturned  among  them, 
P.  Q.'s  sharp  nose  illuminated.  He  was  lying  on  his 
back,  under  a  sheet  and  a  blanket,  motionless.  The 
rest  of  the  room  was  a  cave  of  darkness  in  which 
there  shone,  dimly,  mirrors  and  mahogany  and  the 
silver  things  on  a  dresser  top.  The  bed  was  an 
old-fashioned  edifice  of  ornate  carving. 

I  came  slowly  toward  the  light.  He  said  some 
thing  to  some  one,  without  moving;  and  a  nurse 

[217] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

whom  I  had  not  noticed  rose  from  the  far  side  of  the 
bed,  and  came  around  the  foot  of  it,  and  passed  me 
silently  on  her  way  out.  I  drew  near  enough  to  see 
that  he  was  looking  at  the  ceiling  thoughtfully. 
He  did  not  speak. 

I  asked,  at  last,  "You  sent  for  me?" 

He  closed  his  eyes  slowly  and  opened  them,  as  one 
nods  assent.  I  waited. 

I  supposed  that  he  must  be  very  weak.  I  was  the 
more  surprised  when  his  voice  came  low,  but  strong 
and  even  rancorous: 

"What's  the  matter  with  that  boy?  Why  is  he 
drinking?" 

He  did  not  look  at  me.  His  gaze  had  not  left  the 
ceiling.  I  said:  "I  don't  know.  He  seems  terribly 
upset?" 

He  asked  at  once,  "What's  he  upset  about?" 

I  was  about  to  answer,  "I  don't  know,  "  when  his 
eyes  rolled  around  to  me,  as  sharp  as  an  old  shaggy 
hound's  and  the  light  glittered  on  them  piercingly, 
and  I  looked  away,  intimidated,  like  a  schoolboy. 
When  I  looked  back  at  him  again  he  was  studying 
the  ceiling  as  before. 

He  said,  "He's  been  telling  you  that  story  about 
me,  has  he?" 

I  cleared  my  throat  unsuccessfully.  I  could  not 
get  my  voice  to  come. 

"Has  he  gone  crazy?" 

That  startled  me.    He  asked  it  seriously. 

"Crazy?"  I  said.     "No!"    And  then  I  under- 

[218] 


PETER  QUALE 


stood  Bob's  giggle  ("Thinks  I'm  crazy"),  and  I 
guessed  that  John  Quale  had  dug  the  whole  story 
out  of  Bob  and  reported  it  to  his  father  as  an 
evidence  of  insanity.  Even  so,  I  was  not  prepared 
for  the  next  question. 

Without  any  change  of  tone,  he  asked,  "Has  he 
told  you  he's  not  my  son?" 

I  could  not  answer.  I  could  only  stare  at  him. 
I  could  not  decide  whether  he  knew  that  Bob  was 
not  his  son  or  knew  that  he  was.  He  did  not  move 
an  eyelash.  And  he  was  otherwise  so  still  that  it 
seemed  as  if  his  head  were  the  only  part  of  him  that 
was  alive.  I  could  not  even  see  any  stir  of  breathing. 

He  said,  quietly:  "Answer  me.  I  haven't  time  to 
wait." 

And  I  got  the  feeling  that  he  was  lying  there, 
looking  at  death  on  the  ceiling  and  conserving  every 
heartbeat  and  cautiously  drawing  little  breaths  and 
making  no  smallest  unnecessary  movement  that 
might  be  a  strain;  and  I  answered,  hastily,  "Yes." 

"Where  did  he  get  that  idea?" 

"He's  had  it  a  long  time — ever  since" he  was  a 
child." 

His  face  changed.  He  blinked  several  times  as 
if  something  had  been  suddenly  made  clear  to  him. 
"Is  he  sober  enough  to  understand,  if  I  talk  to 
him?" 

I  shook  my  head.  "I  don't  think  so.  He  will 
be,  by  morning." 

"I  can't  wait."     He  indicated  the  door  with  a 

15  [  £19  ] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

glance.  "If  he  can't  come,  get  his  mother.  Send 
in  that  nurse." 

I  hurried  out,  seriously  excited,  and  in  telling  the 
butler  to  call  Mrs.  Quale  I  must  have  given  him  the 
impression  that  P.  Q.  was  dying.  I  startled  Bob 
into  a  bleary  wakef  ulness,  shaking  him  and  prodding 
him  with  panicky  insistence.  "Wake  up!  Wake 
up!  Bob!  Pull  yourself  together.  Bob!  Listen! 
Your  father  wants  to  see  you.  Come  on.  You've 
got  to  go.  Your  brother's  told  him  everything. 
You've  got  to  see  him.  Pull  yourself  together." 

He  frowned  with  the  effort  to  understand. 
"What?  What's  the  matter?  Is  he ?" 

"Yes,"  I  said,  "he  is.  Hurry  up.  He  wants  to 
see  you.  He  wants  to  tell  you.  You've  made  a 
mistake." 

"Mistake?"  His  bloodshot  eyes  focused  on  me 
dizzily. 

"Yes."  I  forced  him  to  his  feet.  "About  Angela 
• — about  everything.  He  can  explain  it.  He's 
waiting  for  you.  Come  on.  Get  that  smelly  coat 
off.  Get  into  a  dressing  gown.  Here!" 

I  suppose  it  was  my  tone  that  did  it.  I  was  really 
afraid  that  the  old  man  might  die  before  we  got 
back  to  him,  and  I  was  as  frantic  as  if  the  house 
were  afire.  Bob  made  a  desperate  effort  to  com 
prehend,  to  obey,  to  grasp  what  was  going  on,  to 
clear  his  mind  for  action.  He  put  his  hand  to  his 
forehead,  his  face  pale  and  wet  with  the  strain  of 
his  mental  struggle.  I  pulled  off  his  coat  and  thrust 

[220] 


PETER  QUALE 


him  into  his  dressing  gown.  I  hurried  him  to  the 
bathroom  and  attacked  him  with  a  sponge  of  cold 
water,  and  straightened  his  necktie,  and  tried  to 
rectify  his  tousled  look  of  young  profligacy.  I  suc 
ceeded  in  getting  his  brain  steadied  somewhat,  but 
he  staggered  when  he  walked,  and  I  had  to  help 
him  to  his  father's  room  and  lead  him  into  it, 
holding  him  by  the  elbow. 

His  mother  was  already  there,  weeping  helplessly 
at  the  bedside.  P.  Q.  was  saying:  "You  knew  I'd 
have  to  die  sometime,  didn't  you?  Don't  make  it 
any  harder  for  me." 

He  moved  his  head  to  see  us.  "Come  here,"  he 
ordered.  "Both  of  you." 

I  brought  Bob  to  the  light,  looking  down  on  the 
floor  guiltily.  There  was  a  pause.  I  felt  Bob 
stiffen,  confronting  his  father's  scrutiny,  and  I 
heard  him  breathing  hard. 

P.  Q.  said:  "This  story  about  my  father  and  me 
is  all  damn  foolishness.  I  didn't  run  away  from 
home.  He  took  me,  when  I  wasn't  more  than  five 
years  old.  And  he  worked  in  Dublin  for  four  years 
and  earned  the  money  to  come  to  America  with. 
He  was  a  tailor.  For  some  God-forsaken  reason 
I've  been  ashamed  to  admit  I  had  a  tailor  for  a 
father — a  woman's  job,  anyway.  That's  why  I  never 
spoke  of  him.  But  I  didn't  remember  my  mother, 
and  I  didn't  know  I  had  a  sister,  and  I  didn't  even 
know  that  I  hadn't  been  born  in  Ireland.  The 
story  that  I  stole  anybody's  money  is  a  damn  lie!" 

[221] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

I  heard  Mrs.  Quale  murmur,  "Peter!"  protest- 
ingly. 

"Well,"  he  grumbled,  "that's  what  it  is!  Now, 
what's  this  nonsense  about  your  not  being  my  son?  " 

"Peter!" 

I  took  one  look  at  Mrs.  Quale  and  saw  the  amazed 
indignation  of  tearful  innocence  staring  in  her  face. 
I  muttered,  "Beg  your  par—"  and  left  Bob  sway 
ing,  and  fled. 

9 

As  I  consider  Bob's  whole  romance,  now,  I 
realize  that  I  should  have  suspected  the  motivation 
of  his  characters  from  the  first — because  it  was 
conscious  motivation,  and  if  life  teaches  us  anything, 
it  teaches  us  that  human  motives  are  always  almost 
unconscious  and  self-disguised.  That  was  the  very 
point  on  which  fiction  had  misled  me.  And  in  my 
fiction-fed  stupidity,  I  had  helped  to  mislead  Bob. 

P.  Q.'s  lifelong  pursuit  of  security  was  not  the 
indication  of  any  moral  guilt.  It  was  the  uncon 
scious  result  of  being  thrown  on  the  world  a  mere 
child,  unprotected.  He  had  made  his  own  way  as 
a  youth,  without  friends  and  affection;  and  when 
he  arrived  where  friends  and  affection  were  his  for 
the  asking,  he  had  not  the  faculty  of  asking  for 
them.  His  lack  of  education  was  the  source  of  that 
unconscious  feeling  of  inferiority  which  expressed 
itself  in  defensive  insolence  and  aggressive  domina 
tion.  He  had  missed  all  the  socializing  influences 

[222] 


PETER  QUALE 


of  school-yard  companionship,  and  his  philosophy 
of  life  was  "You  be  damned."  He  had  been  given 
no  social  feeling  for  public  service,  and  he  saw  his 
public  properties  as  all  his  own.  He  had  never  been 
taught  the  rules  of  the  civilized  game  of  community 
life,  and  he  would  steal  men  from  the  checkerboard 
in  order  to  win.  He  had  to  win.  It  was  the  neces 
sity  of  his  unsocialized  ego,  of  his  sense  of  hidden 
inferiority,  of  his  constant  need  to  defeat  his 
opponent  and  overcome  his  own  fear. 

I  should  have  known  it.  And  I  should  have 
known  that  in  a  divided  family,  such  as  the  Quales, 
Bob's  delusion  that  he  was  not  his  father's  son 
would  almost  inevitably  arise  out  of  his  champion 
ing  his  mother  and  ranging  himself  on  her  side 
against  his  father.  I  should  not  have  needed  Bob's 
broken  explanations  when  he  returned  to  his  room 
and  sank  into  a  chair  and  took  his  head  in  his  hands 
and  began  to  sob  that  he  had  been  a  fool,  that  he 
had  misjudged  his  father,  that  he  had  always  been 
secretly  "proud  of  the  old  man"  and  really  fond  of 
him.  "I've — I've  always  been  his  favorite,"  he 
wept.  "And  I  knew  it.  But  I — I  wouldn't  admit 
it  to  myself.  I  fought  him.  I  tried  to  hate  him. 
He  knew!  He  knew  all  along.  He  said  to  me, 
*  That's  why  you'd  never  let  me  win  at  checkers, 
eh?'  And  he  tried  to  smile.  God!"  He  wept, 
heartbroken.  "What  a  fool  I've  been!" 

"But,  Bob!"  I  said.  "You  told  me  you'd  heard 
your  mother " 

[223] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

"Oh  that  was  all  damn  nonsense!"  He  looked  up 
with  a  tear-drenched,  contorted  face.  "She  was 
unhappy  about  something.  They'd  quarreled. 
And  she  meant  that  I  wasn't  like  the  other  boys 
and  wasn't  like  him.  And  she  said,  'Thank  Heaven, 
he's  not  a  Quale' — or  something  like  that.  And  I 
hated  him  because  he'd  made  her  cry.  And  I  didn't 
want  to  be  his  son.  And  I  got  the  fool  idea — " 
He  gasped  and  shook  his  head,  unable  to  go  on. 

When  he  caught  his  breath  again  he  groaned: 
"The  poor  old  geezer,  he  tried  to  apologize  to  us 
both — to  explain  that  he'd  been  a  failure  with  us 
because  he'd  always  been  kind  of  dumb  and — and 
busy — and  piled  up  with  things  he  had  to  do — things 
that  interested  him  more  than  they  ought  to. 
Gee!  It  tore  the  guts  out  of  me  to  listen  to  him." 

He  got  blindly  to  his  feet  and  made  his  way  blun 
deringly  to  the  bathroom  and  had  his  cry  out  there 
under  the  pretense  of  washing  his  face.  When  he 
came  back  he  was  swollen -eyed  and  disfigured  with 
weeping,  but  the  worst  was  over.  "He's  got  his 
nerve  with  him,"  he  said.  "He  knows  every  heart 
beat's  likely  to  be  his  last,  and  it  worries  him  about 
as  much  as  I'd  be  if  I  was  waiting  for  the  dentist. 
He's  as  sore  as  boils  about  John.  The  big  mutton- 
head  tried  to  make  him  believe  I  ought  to  be  sent 
to  the  lunatic  asylum.  He  thinks  the  old  man's 
going  to  leave  him  in  charge  of  the  estate.  I'll  bet 
he's  not.  John's  bug  about  the  money  and  the 
position  it  '11  give  him.  So's  Paul.  Paul  thinks 

[224] 


PETER  QUALE 


that  if  he  only  had  money  enough  he  could  make 
everybody  be  good  and  go  to  church.  John  thinks 
he's  going  to  make  them  all  work  and  be  efficient — 
going  to  run  the  country " 

(And,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  Bob  proved  to  be  right. 
P.  Q.  left  his  estate  in  the  hands  of  a  trust  company 
to  be  administered  until  his  youngest  grandchild 
should  be  of  age.  Characteristic !) 

We  talked  and  talked  until  daylight  began  to 
come  in  the  window  that  the  butler  had  opened  on 
us.  And  it  was  the  last  talk  of  the  sort  that  we  had 
together.  When  I  woke  late  next  day,  Bob  was 
already  in  his  father's  room.  He  came  to  lunch 
in  a  subdued  glow  of  happiness,  and  his  mother  and 
he  carried  on  a  secret  interchange  of  meaningful 
smiles,  no  matter  what  we  talked  about.  He  was 
like  a  boy  in  love.  And  he  seemed  to  have  for 
gotten  Angela. 

"We're  going  to  rig  up  the  checkerboard  to 
night,"  he  said,  "and  try  to  play  a  game.  The 
nurse  '11  make  the  moves  for  him,  so  he'll  not  have 
to  raise  a  finger  if  he  doesn't  want  to." 

I  was  glad  enough  to  see  him  happy.  And  Mrs. 
Quale  tried  to  conceal  from  me  the  reproachful 
thought  that  I  had  deceived  her  and  encouraged 
Bob  in  his  almost  tragical  delusion.  But  it  was 
obvious  that  they  both  knew  he  did  not  "need" 
me  any  more;  and  after  a  lonely  evening  spent  in 
looking  for  amusement,  while  Bob  entertained  his 
dad,  I  pretended  that  a  letter  from  home  was  an 

[225] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

urgent  summons  to  return,  and  they  let  me  go  with 
polite  regrets.  On  the  train  I  realized  that  it  was 
the  end  of  our  companionship;  that  Bob  would 
never  be  able  to  forgive  me  for  sharing  his  ridiculous 
mistake  with  him.  And  he  never  did. 

According  to  the  newspapers,  P.  Q.  died  of  an 
attack  of  rheumatism  that  had  reached  his  heart. 
The  editorials  and  the  obituaries  all  described  him 
as  a  rare  and  original  character.  I  agreed  with  them 
at  the  time,  but  I  am  not  so  sure,  now,  that  he  was 
not  the  commonest  type  of  successful  American. 

E.  H.  Reede,  the  neurologist,  has  written: 

Adler  introduced  a  revolutionary  concept  into  the 
study  of  psychic  mechanisms  by  showing  that  the  per 
ception  of  inferiority,  insecurity  or  danger,  stimulates  in 
the  subconscious  mind  a  mobilization  of  psychic  dexter 
ities  which  results  in  that  super-psychisrn  recognized  as 
genius.  In  America,  the  insecurity  that  resides  in  Puritan 
repression  was  confronted  by  the  new-world  menace  of 
pioneer  perils;  and  insecurity  triumphed  over  menace 
only  by  virtue  of  a  concentrated  intellectual  cunning. 
That  has  produced  the  one  unique  American  type.  It  is 
the  archetype  of  our  great  frontiersmen,  our  successful 
politicians,  and  our  predatory  business  men  who  stalk 
and  ambush  their  competitors. 

And,  at  any  rate,  it  is  certainly  the  type  of  Peter 
Quale. 


VI.  DR.  ADRIAN  HALE  HALLMUTH 


Y 


OU  have  never  heard  of  him.  Naturally. 
He  was  one  of  the  most  valuable  citizens  of  our 
day.  He  saved  innumerable  lives.  He  taught 
others  how  to  save  more  innumerable  lives.  But, 
our  civilization  being  what  it  is,  he  could  live  in 
distinguished  obscurity  for  twenty  years,  in  New 
York  City  itself,  within  hailing  distance  of  all  the 
newspaper  presses  and  publicity  agents  and  noto 
riety  factories  of  the  metroplis,  and  you  would  never 
hear  of  him. 

I  never  heard  of  him,  myself,  until  Doctor  Ward 
spoke  of  him  to  me — Dr.  Lucius  Freeman  Ward. 

"Hallmuth  was  the  best  surgeon  that  America 
has  turned  out,"  Doctor  Ward  said.  "I've  seen 
students  come  out  of  his  clinics  almost  with  tears 
in  their  eyes — tears  of  admiration  and  a  sort  of 
despair — like  young  pianists  from  a  Paderewski 
concert.  He  worked  as  if  he  were  clairvoyant,  as 
if  he  had  eyes  in  the  blade  of  his  knife.  And  when  he 
came  to  one  of  those  abdominal  operations  where 
you  have  to  depend  on  your  fingers  to  tell  you  what 
you  can't  see — and  you're  wearing  rubber  gloves — 
he  had  a  sixth  sense.  I've  never  seen  anything 
like  it.  Never." 

[227] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

I  believe  it  was  this  suggestion  of  clairvoyance 
that  really  interested  me.  Occult  powers  in  a  sur 
geon!  It  was  like  being  told  that  the  Stock  Ex 
change  at  its  noisiest  hour  was  haunted. 

I  asked  for  evidence  and  instances;  and,  of 
course,  it  began  to  appear  that  Doctor  Hallmuth's 
magic  was  just  surgical  legerdemain.  He  had  de 
voted  himself  to  his  profession  with  such  singleness 
of  determination  that  he  had  developed,  as  it  were, 
special  sense  organs  in  his  hands.  He  could  shut 
his  eyes,  spread  his  fingers,  and  tell  you  to  the 
sixty -fourth  of  an  inch  how  far  his  finger  tips  were 
apart.  He  could  separate  his  hands,  in  the  same 
way,  and  give  the  exact  distance  between  his  fore 
fingers,  blindfold.  "He  had  a  grip  like  a  pipe 
wrench,"  Doctor  Ward  said.  "He  could  pull  a  cork 
with  his  second  and  third  fingers.  They  closed  on  it 
like  a  pair  of  pliers.  He  could  take  hold  of  your 
wrist,  that  way,  and  fairly  bruise  it.  They  weren't 
fingers;  they  were  steel  calipers."  The  cords  in  the 
backs  of  his  hands  played  freely  back  and  forth  over 
the  knuckles,  and  he  could  expand  and  contract  the 
width  of  the  hand  as  if  the  bones  in  it  were  the 
ribs  of  a  fan.  "He  wasn't  altogether  born  that 
way,"  Ward  explained.  "He  had  purposely  ac 
quired  it,  like  a  contortionist,  as  part  of  his 
training." 

Ward  had  known  him  from  boyhood.  They  had 
both  been  born  in  the  New  England  town  of 
Primpton,  Massachusetts,  but  they  came  of  fam- 

[228] 


DR.  ADRIAN  HALE  HALLMUTH 

ilies  separated  by  such  a  distance  in  the  social 
scale  that  it  was  not  until  they  arrived  in  the  same 
class  at  college  that  they  became  intimate.  Ward 
had  intended  to  study  law.  Hallmuth  persuaded 
him  to  go  into  medicine.  "It  was  like  a  religious 
enthusiasm  with  him,"  Ward  said.  "He  converted 
me.  There's  no  other  word  for  it.  And  that  was 
one  of  the  things  that  puzzled  me  about  Hallmuth 
until  quite  lately — what  had  given  him  this  fanat 
ical  feeling  about  medicine?" 

Hallmuth's  father  owned  the  textile  mills  at 
Primpton,  and  Hallmuth,  as  the  eldest  son,  should 
have  succeeded  him  in  the  business.  The  grand 
father  had  been  an  immigrant  weaver  who  married 
a  Massachusetts  girl;  the  father  married  one  of 
the  New  England  Hales;  there  had  never  been  a 
doctor  anywhere  in  the  immediate  family. 

"You'd  have  expected  Hallmuth  to  be  a  parson, 
if  anything,"  Ward  said.  "The  old  people  were  as 
devout  as  Jonathan  Edwards.  They  had  a  fine 
old  religious  prejudice  against  science  as  atheistic, 
and  he  had  a  fight  for  it  before  they  let  him  go  to 
the  medical  school.  How  do  you  suppose  he  beat 
them?  Well,  he  persuaded  them  that  he  had  'a  call' 
to  medicine — like  a  minister's  call.  And  he  had. 
I  found  out,  just  lately,  how  the  call  came.  It's  one 
of  the  most  curious  things  I  ever  ran  across." 

"Tell  me  about  it,"  I  said. 

He  did  not  respond  at  once.  He  sat  sunken  in 
his  armchair,  pinching  his  chin  between  thumb  and 

[229] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

forefinger,  and  looking  through  me  thoughtfully, 
with  one  eyebrow  higher  than  the  other  and  his  eyes 
not  focused.  It  gave  him  a  melancholy  expression. 

He  had  just  heard  that  Hallmuth,  in  charge  of  a 
field-hospital  unit,  had  died  from  exposure  in  the 
Serbian  retreat  over  the  mountains  of  Montenegro, 
somewhere  between  Fetch  and  Scutari,  in  December, 
1915.  Or,  rather,  he  had  just  had  a  confirmation  of 
the  cable  news  of  Hallmuth' s  death,  in  a  letter  from 
his  assistant,  a  Doctor  Rogers.  It  was  this  letter 
that  had  moved  Ward  to  speak  of  Hallmuth  to  me. 

"Tell  you  about  it?"  he  said,  at  last.  "I  don't 
know  how  to  tell  you  about  it.  It's  too  long  a  story. 
It's  the  story  of  Hallmuth' s  whole  life." 

He  thought  it  over,  in  a  sort  of  mute  wonder. 

"The  Greeks  would  have  called  it  Fate,"  he  said. 
"And  it  shows  what  this  thing  is  sometimes — the 
thing  that  we  call  Fate." 

He  nodded  to  himself. 

"Well,"  he  concluded,  "I'll  tell  you  the  parts 
that  are  more  or  less  significant." 


He  began  to  tell  me  about  the  time  when  Hall 
muth  and  he  had  been  internes  together  at  the  old 
St.  Luke's;  and  his  reminiscences,  after  the  manner 
of  such,  were  concerned  more  with  riotous  doings 
out  of  hours  than  with  duties  in  the  hospital.  Hall 
muth  had  two  enviable  qualifications  for  leader- 

[230] 


DR.  ADRIAN  HALE  HALLMUTH 

ship  in  their  young  medical  convivialities :  he  could 
drink  as  much  beer  as  a  German  student,  and  he 
played  the  piano  like  a  rhythmical  baboon. 

44  He'd  spent  a  year  abroad,"  Ward  explained, 
"chiefly  in  Vienna.  He  came  back  with  a  prej 
udice  against  the  Germans — due  to  their  operating 
on  charity  patients  without  giving  them  anaes 
thetics,  as  far  as  I  could  make  out — and  another 
prejudice  against  their  music.  He  called  it  melodic 
suicide,  tonal  pessimism.  He  would  never  play 
anything  but  dances  and  ragtime.  He  said  he  had 
taken  up  the  piano  to  develop  his  hands.  I  don't 
believe  that.  He  had  a  gift  for  music,  if  he  had 
cared  to  follow  it,  but  he  wouldn't.  He  wouldn't 
surrender  to  his  emotions.  He  never  went  to  con 
certs  or  operas.  If  an  orchestra  started  anything 
at  all  moving,  he'd  get  out." 

The  gang  to  which  they  belonged  had  found  a 
little  Hungarian  restaurant  where  they  could  get 
table  d'hote  dinners  cheap  and  have  the  freedom  of 
a  good  piano.  It  was  the  resort  of  another  clique, 
also,  a  group  from  the  underworld;  and  among 
these  were  two  who  became  involved  with  Hallmuth. 

One  was  a  thin-lipped  young  crook  whom  they 
nicknamed  "the  Jackdaw"  because  of  his  color  and 
his  sinister  air;  and  the  other  was  the  Jackdaw's 
"skirt,"  a  silent  and  adoring  child  of  the  streets, 
so  blond  and  chalk-faced  that  they  called  her  "Angel 
Mary."  They  did  not  know  the  real  name  of  either. 

"We'd  noticed  them  together  several  times  at  a 

I  231  ] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

table  in  the  back  of  the  joint,"  Ward  said,  "and  for 
some  reason  Hallmuth  took  a  scunner  to  the  Jack 
daw  on  sight." 

He  had  very  sleek  and  glossy  black  hair,  and  a 
bony  nose,  and  a  round  unwinking  eye  that  looked 
at  you  sideways  like  a  rooster's.  The  girl  used  to 
sit  and  wait  for  him,  without  eating;  and  she  would 
give  him  a  searching,  frightened  glance  as  he  entered, 
to  see  what  his  mood  was.  If  he  came  in  with  his 
hat  on  the  side  of  his  head,  swinging  his  bamboo 
cane,  she  brightened  as  if  the  sun  had  risen.  They 
sat  and  talked  over  their  food,  with  their  heads 
together,  so  that  you  could  never  hear  what  they 
said;  and  at  the  end  of  the  meal  she  paid  the  check 
and  went  out  cheerfully  and  left  him  to  smoke  over 
his  empty  plate,  pleased  with  himself. 

More  often  he  entered  dragging  his  stick,  his  hat 
down  on  his  nose;  and  he  sat  without  looking  at  her, 
and  only  spoke  to  her  out  of  the  side  of  his  mouth, 
sourly.  Then  she  would  eat  her  meal  as  quickly 
as  possible  and  pay  the  check  and  slink  away  as 
dejected  as  a  disappointed  child. 

"We  knew  a  lot  of  policemen,  from  our  ambu 
lance  work,"  Ward  explained.  "Hallmuth  asked 
them  about  the  Jackdaw,  and  found  out  that  he 
was  one  of  Chick  Allen's  cadets.  Probably  a  pick 
pocket  and  petty  con  man,  too.  The  girl  was  on  the 
streets,  helping  to  support  him." 

One  night  they  sat  at  a  table  directly  behind 
Hallmuth  and  began  their  meal  quietly,  but  ended 

[232] 


DR.  ADRIAN  HALE  HALLMUTH 

it  with  a  quarrel  about  a  ruby  brooch  that  the 
Jackdaw  wanted  to  give  her  and  she  was  afraid  to 
take.  Hallmuth  was  listening.  The  others  were 
not.  And  when  the  crook,  in  the  midst  of  a  hoarse 
whispered  controversy,  suddenly  slapped  her  face, 
Hallmuth  spun  around  and  struck  him  an  open- 
handed  blow  on  the  side  of  his  head  that  toppled 
him  off  his  chair.  He  sprang  up  and  tried  to  rush 
Hallmuth,  and  Hallmuth  knocked  him  down. 

That  started  a  "free  for  all."  There  were  several 
of  the  medical  clique  in  the  cafe,  and  at  first  they 
had  all  the  best  of  it;  but  more  of  Chick  Allen's 
gang  kept  coming  in,  with  brass  knuckles  and  black 
jacks,  and  the  students  had  to  defend  themselves 
with  chairs  and  carafes  and  anything  else  they  could 
snatch  up.  Some  one  called  in  the  police,  and  that 
saved  them. 

"Hallmuth  and  I  were  cornered,"  Ward  said, 
"behind  a  table  that  we  had  overturned,  beating 
off  three  or  four  toughs  who  were  trying  to  disfigure 
us.  And  behind  us  was  the  girl.  When  the  police 
stopped  the  fight,  Hallmuth  saw  that  she  had  the 
brooch  in  her  hand — the  brooch  that  she  and  the 
Jackdaw  had  quarreled  about.  She  had  caught  it 
up  when  the  table  overturned.  Hallmuth  said: 
'Here!  Don't  let  them  see  you  with  that,'  and  he 
snatched  it  away  from  her.  Then  when  the  cops 
were  lining  us  up,  he  held  it  out  to  the  Jackdaw  and 
said,  '  I  think  this  is  yours ! ' 

"Of  course,  a  plain  clothes  man  grabbed  it  at 

[2331 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

once.  He  demanded,  'Where  did  you  get  that?* 
and  Hallmuth  explained. 

"The  detective  took  out  his  handcuffs.  'I  guess 
this  '11  do  for  you,'  he  said  to  the  Jackdaw,  and 
arrested  him  for  burglary. 

"I  forget  the  details  of  that  part  of  the  business. 
Some  one  confessed  and  the  Jackdaw  went  up  the 
river  for  five  years.  All  I  remember  is  our  end  of 
the  affair.  The  desk  sergeant  didn't  hold  Hallmuth 
or  me,  but  he  held  the  girl,  and  Hallmuth  went 
down  to  court  next  day  and  paid  her  fine.  I  knew 
this  at  the  time,  but  I  didn't  know  that  he  took  her 
uptown  and  got  her  a  place  to  live  and  found  work 
for  her  to  keep  her  off  the  streets.  And  I  didn't 
know  that  he  continued  seeing  her. 

"Chick  Allen's  gang  were  looking  for  us  and  we 
had  to  keep  away  from  their  end  of  the  town.  That 
broke  up  our  parties  for  a  while.  I  thought  that 
Hallmuth  was  spending  his  off  hours  with  a  girl 
named  Helen  Kane — Doctor  Kane's  daughter.  You 
remember  Kane?  He  had  a  fashionable  practice — 
Madison  Avenue.  Helen  was  a  handsome  big  girl, 
athletic.  Hallmuth  used  to  ride  with  her  in  the 
Park.  I  thought  he  was  seeing  her  whenever  he 
went  off  without  me. 

"Well,  he  wasn't.  He  was  having  some  sort  of 
affair  with  'Angel  Mary.'  I  didn't  suspect  it  even 
when  she  came  looking  for  me,  one  night  at  the 
hospital,  in  a  pouring  rain,  soaking  wet.  I  wasn't 
there,  and  she  didn't  ask  for  Hallmuth,  and  she 

[234] 


DR.  ADRIAN  HALE  HALLMUTH 

went  away  without  leaving  any  message.  They 
had  had  a  quarrel — as  I  learned  later — and  she  was 
trying  to  find  him.  He  never  said  a  word. 

"Two  or  three  days  afterward  she  came  to  the 
dispensary  for  medicine  and  they  turned  her  into 
the  free  ward  with  a  bad  attack  of  pneumonia.  One 
of  the  nurses  came  to  me,  from  her.  She  didn't 
mind  involving  me,  but  she  was  game  about  pro 
tecting  Hallmuth.  'Tell  him  I'm  here,'  she  said, 
'but  don't  tell  anyone  I  know  him.' 

"I  told  him,  but  he  didn't  say  anything.  He 
used  to  get  into  the  ward  to  see  her,  without  letting 
anyone  but  the  nurse  know.  I  was  with  him  there, 
at  other  times,  but  Angel  Mary  didn't  give  either  of 
us  away  by  so  much  as  a  look  that  anyone  would 
notice — not  even  when  she  was  dying.  She  was  a 
game  kid,  all  right. 

"I  didn't  know  what  had  been  going  on  until 
Hallmuth  asked  me  to  see  that  she  wasn't  buried  in 
Potter's  Field,  and  gave  me  money  for  the  under 
taker.  Even  then  I  had  to  guess  the  truth  from  the 
change  that  came  over  him.  He  began  to  be  queer. 
He  stopped  riding  in  the  Park — said  the  crows  there 
gave  him  'the  willies.'  And  then  he  dropped  Helen 
Kane — said  he  hated  dark  women,  anyway.  And 
then  he  quit  St.  Luke's  and  went  back  to  Vienna. 
And  I  lost  track  of  him  for  a  long  time. 

"It  seems  he  took  his  holidays  in  the  Balkans 
while  he  was  over  there,  and  he  learned  to  speak 
some  of  the  languages — Serbian,  at  least.  That's 

16  [  235  ] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

why  he  volunteered  for  service  with  the  Serbian 
Relief — that  and  his  feeling  about  the  Germans. 
Well " 

3 

Ward  paused,  and  cleared  his  throat  as  if  he  were 
going  on  at  once,  and  then  fell  silent,  leaning  for 
ward  in  his  chair  and  looking  at  his  feet.  I  sup 
posed  that  he  had  suddenly  become  aware  that  he 
was  rambling  in  his  narrative  and  getting  nowhere; 
and  it  had  the  effect  of  a  flash  of  thought-transference 
when  he  looked  up  at  me  to  ask,  "Did  you  notice  the 
significance  of  all  that?" 

"Of  all  what?" 

"Of  all  those  incidents?  The  Jackdaw?  The 
blond  Angel  Mary?  The  crows  that  gave  him  the 
willies?" 

I  shook  my  head,  finding  it  empty. 

He  smiled.  "I  didn't  either,  at  the  time.  I  didn't 
even  suspect  that  there  was  any  significance  in  them 
at  all,  until  just  before  he  sailed  for  England  to 
volunteer  for  work  in  the  Balkans.  He  came  to 
Washington  to  visit  the  British  Embassy,  and  he 
dropped  in  to  call  on  me." 

Here  Ward  drifted  off  into  another  long  digres 
sion.  It  seems  that  when  he  left  St.  Luke's  he  went 
into  general  practice,  and  became  dissatisfied  with 
his  inability  to  cure  anything  but  the  simple  germ 
diseases,  and  caught  at  a  new  theory  of  the  effect  of 
the  internal  glands  on  the  body  as  the  cause  of  much 

[236] 


DB.  ADRIAN  HALE  HALLMUTH 

ill  health,  and  made  himself  a  sort  of  specialist  in 
the  functions  of  these  glands  and  their  disorders. 
Then  he  found  that  the  glands  were  affected  by 
emotions  to  such  a  degree  that  in  many  cases  he  was 
merely  treating,  in  the  glands,  the  symptoms  of  a 
disturbance  in  the  patient's  mind;  and  this  took 
him  into  the  field  of  mind  cure  and  psychology. 
By  the  time  that  Hallmuth  returned  from  his  surgi 
cal  studies  abroad,  Ward  had  lost  his  faith  in  the 
knife  as  anything  but  a  pruning  hook,  and  Hallmuth 
had  arrived  where  he  would  open  a  patient  as 
inevitably  as  a  watch  repairer  opens  a  watch.  He 
perfected  a  new  technic  of  sacral  suspension,  and 
brought  the  operation  for  appendicitis  to  the  point 
of  being  as  safe  as  pulling  a  tooth,  and  performed 
prodigies  of  skill  in  cutting  diseased  areas  from 
essential  organs  without  stopping  the  watch.  To 
Ward,  he  was  merely  treating  symptoms  by  remov 
ing  the  results  of  disorders  which  he  did  nothing  to 
cure.  They  did  not  exactly  quarrel  about  it;  Ward 
was  practicing  in  Washington,  and  Hallmuth  in 
New  York,  and  they  were  both  too  busy  to  write 
controversial  letters;  but  they  exchanged  mono 
graphs  on  their  pet  subjects  and  agreed  to  differ  in 
a  silence  that  was  not  friendly.  So,  when  Hallmuth 
came  to  Washington  in  the  spring  of  1915,  and 
telephoned  from  his  hotel  to  Ward,  Ward  accepted 
his  invitation  to  dinner  with  natural  misgivings. 

"We  had  a  whale  of  a  fight,"  Ward  said.    "He'd 
been  the  big  frog  in  his  surgical  puddle  for  fifteen 

18371 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

years,  and  he  looked  on  me  as  a  disciple  who  had 
gone  astray.  It  took  me  till  midnight  to  make  him 
feel  that  he  wasn't  divine  intelligence  instructing 
an  insect.  Nobody  had  dared  to  argue  with  him  for 
ten  years,  probably.  We  had  a  gory  time." 

The  upshot  of  it  was  that  Hallmuth  came  to  see 
him  on  the  following  day,  in  his  office. 

"He  had  a  challenge  for  me,"  Ward  said.  "He 
wanted  to  know  why  the  sight  of  the  purple  grackle 
in  Lafayette  Park,  that  morning,  had  given  him 
such  a  depression  that  instead  of  going  on  to  the 
British  Embassy  he  turned  back  to  his  hotel  and 
went  to  bed.  If  there  was  anything  in  my  theories 
about  emotions  and  their  origins,  where  did  this 
emotion  come  from?" 

In  reply,  Ward  started  to  "dig,"  as  he  put  it. 
When  had  Hallmuth  first  felt  this  depression  at  the 
sight  of  a  black  bird? 

He  had  always  felt  it.  For  years,  if  he  saw  a 
crow,  on  his  way  to  an  operation,  he  couldn't  help 
but  feel  that  it  meant  bad  luck. 

Yes?    And  before  that? 

Well,  he  remembered  meeting  a  girl  at  the 
Metropolitan  Museum  of  Art  and  having  a  fit  of 
the  blues  when  he  saw  a  painting  of  some  battle 
scene  in  which  vultures  or  some  other  black  birds 
were  settling  on  the  dead. 

"I  didn't  ask  him  whether  this  girl  was  Helen 
Kane,"  Ward  said,  "and  I  didn't  remind  him  that 
he  had  given  up  riding  in  the  Park  because  the 

[238] 


DR.  ADRIAN  HALE  HALLMUTH 

crows  gave  him  the  'willies.'  And  I  didn't  recall  to 
him  that  he  had  dropped  her  because  he  disliked 
'  dark  women,'  and  that  he  had  hated  the  Jackdaw 
on  sight  and  got  himself  into  that  mess  with  Angel 
Mary  as  a  result — and  all  the  rest  of  it.  I  was  afraid 
that  he'd  blow  up  and  accuse  me  of  being  crazy  on 
my  own  dope.  I  said :  'This  thing  probably  traces 
back  to  your  early  childhood.  Do  you  remember 
any  crows  or  blackbirds  at  home?' 5> 

He  replied  that  there  were  always  crows  in  the 
pines  on  one  side  of  the  house,  and  they  always 
depressed  him.  "The  house  was  a  gloomy  old  hole, 
anyway,"  he  said.  "I  was  always  glad  when  my 
holidays  were  over  and  I  could  get  back  to  school. 
There  was  too  much  prayer  and  Puritanism  at  home." 

Ward  asked:  "Had  it  any  other  depressing 
associations?  Had  anybody  died  there — anyone 
that  you  were  very  fond  of?" 

"Yes,"  Hallmuth  said,  "a  cousin,  when  I  was 
about  seven — a  little  girl,  an  orphan.  My  parents 
had  all  but  adopted  her." 

"Was  she  dark  or  fair?"  Ward  asked. 

"She  had  long  yellow  curls,"  Hallmuth  said. 
"I  remember  that.  And  I  remember  that  when 
she  took  sick  they  wouldn't  let  me  into  the  room 
to  see  her.  It  was  diphtheria,  I  suppose.  And  when 
they  were  all  asleep  one  night  I  sneaked  downstairs 
and  got  into  bed  with  her."  He  laughed  contemp 
tuously.  "I  remember  the  row  they  raised  when 
they  found  us  asleep  together  in  the  morning." 

[239] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

"They  were  afraid  you'd  get  the  diphtheria?" 
Ward  asked. 

"It  wasn't  only  that.  They  had  nice  clean 
Puritan  minds,  and  poor  little  Fanny  was  three  or 
four  years  older  than  I  was — 'old  enough  to  know 
better,'  as  they  said — and  they  treated  the  whole 
incident  as  a  nasty  scandal.  Really!  There  had 
been  something  the  matter  about  her  mother.  I 
never  knew  what.  But  they  saw  'the  bad  blood' 
coming  out  in  Fanny,  and  one  of  my  maiden  aunts 
was  quite  relieved  when  the  diphtheria  killed  her.  I 
heard  her  saying  so — with  tears,  of  course,  and  sanc 
timoniously — arguing  that  it  was  probably  'all  for 
the  best'  to  have  her  taken  away  from  the  sins  and 
temptations  of  this  world.  Lord !  how  I  hated  her ! " 

Ward  had  been  struck  by  the  parallel  between  this 
incident  and  the  death  of  Angel  Mary  in  the  hos 
pital;  and  with  that  parallel  in  his  mind,  he  asked, 
cryptically,  "Where  did  the  Jackdaw  come  in?" 

Hallmuth  answered:  "It  wasn't  a  jackdaw.  It 
was  a  raven."  And  then  he  asked,  astonished, 
"How  did  you  know?" 

"I  didn't,"  Ward  evaded  him.  "Tell  me  about 
the  raven." 

It  was  a  stuffed  bird,  under  a  glass  bell,  on  the 
mantelpiece  of  the  room  in  which  Fanny  was  laid 
out  for  burial.  Hallmuth  was  taken  in  there  by  the 
family  to  join  in  funeral  prayers;  and  he  could  not 
bear  to  look  at  Fanny's  face;  and  he  would  not  look 
at  any  of  the  family  because  he  felt  that  they  were 

[  240  ] 


DR.  ADRIAN  HALE  HALLMUTH 

all,  like  his  aunt,  glad  that  she  had  died;  so  he  stared 
sullenly  at  the  bright-eyed  bird  on  the  mantelshelf, 
with  its  head  cocked  on  one  side  like  some  pert  imp 
of  Satan.  "It  looked  like  my  aunt  in  her  black 
dress,"  Hallmuth  said.  "And  it  looked  like  the 
undertaker.  And  all  the  mourners  came  trooping 
around  like  black  birds.  And  I  ran  away  and  hid  in 
the  orchard  and  wouldn't  go  to  the  funeral.  And  I 
hated  them  all,  and  I  hated  the  house,  and  I  hated 
the  crows " 


Ward,  relating  it,  settled  back  in  his  chair  and 
spread  his  hands  as  one  says,  "And  there  you  are!" 

"But  do  you  mean  to  say "  I  began. 

"I  mean  to  say,"  he  interrupted,  "that  because  of 
those  incidents  in  his  childhood,  the  black  bird 
became  associated  with  death  in  Hallmuth's  mind 
to  such  a  degree,  and  so  unconsciously,  that  when 
ever  he  saw  a  crow  or  a  purple  grackle  it  gave  him  a 
depression,  and  a  fear,  and  a  sense  of  failure  that 
he  couldn't  fight  against.  Any  black  bird  was  a 
symbol  of  death  to  his  instinctive  emotions.  It 
was  this  fear  and  hatred  of  death  that  made  him  a 
doctor.  His  ambition  to  study  medicine  began  al 
most  immediately  after  his  cousin  died.  That  was 
where  'the  call'  came  from.  He  wanted  to  fight 
death  as  a  divinity  student  wants  to  fight  sin.  It 
was  a  real  call.  And  it  made  him  a  great  surgeon. 
But  it  also  set  his  limitations  as  a  physician.  He 

[241] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

had  to  have  tangible  causes  and  *  results — hence 
surgery.  With  the  knife,  you  know  pretty  well  what 
you  want  to  do,  and  you  have  only  to  acquire  the 
necessary  skill  in  order  to  do  it,  hence  Hallmuth's 
drive  to  develop  his  hands.  And  I'm  willing  to  bet 
it  was  his  fear  of  death  and  of  melancholy  thoughts 
of  death  that  made  him  hate  any  kind  of  sad  music. 
And  I'm  not  ashamed  to  say  that  I  believe  some  of 
his  hatred  of  Germany  probably  came  of  that  two- 
headed  black  bird,  the  imperial  eagle,  or  whatever 
it  is.  And  when  war  broke  out  he  saw  it  as  the 
triumph  of  death  and  he  gave  up  everything  to  fling 
himself  into  it." 

"Did  you  tell  him  so?" 

"I  did  not,"  Ward  said,  grimly.  "It  would  have 
sounded  as  fantastic  to  him  as  it  does  to  you.  You 
people  can't  stand  to  have  the  childishness  of  your 
apparently  intelligent  mental  processes  exposed  to 
you.  I  simply  connected  his  blackbird  depression 
with  his  first  knowledge  of  death,  and  let  it  go  at 
that.  I'm  sorry,  now,  that  I  didn't  tell  him  the 
whole  truth.  I  might  have  saved  him." 

"Saved  him  how?" 

"Saved  him  from  being  killed  by  a  blackbird." 


I  must  have  shown  my  amused  incredulity.  Ward 
got  up  and  took  a  letter  from  the  clutter  of  papers 
on  his  desk,  and  sat  down  with  it,  turning  the  pages. 

[242] 


DR.  ADRIAN  HALE  HALLMUTH 

"The  cable  from  London,"  he  said,  "reporting 
Hallmuth's  death,  announced  that  his  hospital  unit 
had  arrived  at  Brindisi  without  him,  and  was  held 
there  in  quarantine.  I  cabled  to  Rogers,  his  as 
sistant,  asking  for  confirmation.  I  got  this  letter 
from  him  after  he  reached  Paris.  Listen,  now: — " 

He  began  about  page  three.  "  'Hallmuth  showed 
no  signs  of  strain  up  to  the  night  we  left  Kraguye- 
vatz.  We  were  retreating  before  the  Germans  under 
Mackensen,  with  the  Austrians  off  to  our  left,  I 
think,  and  the  Bulgarians  pressing  in  from  the  other 
flank  to  cut  us  off.  Our  orders  were  to  get  ourselves 
and  our  ambulances  to  Prishtina  by  way  of " 

He  waved  it  aside.  "I  can't  pronounce  those 
names.  It's  immaterial." 

"'We  understood  that  at  Prishtina  we  might 
expect  to  meet  the  Allied  forces  on  their  way  north 
to  block  the  Bulgars.  The  road  from  Kraguyevatz 
to  Prishtina  took  us  down  the  entire  Serbian  line 
that  faced  the  Bulgars,  and  we  had  the  German  guns 
behind  us — where  our  division  was  fighting  rear 
guard  actions — and  the  Bulgarian  guns  coming  in 
nearer  and  nearer  from  the  east.  At  first  we  had 
plenty  of  work — lots  of  wounded — wherever  we 
pitched  our  hospital  tents,  but  as  the  retreat  became 
more  of  a  rout  the  day's  wounded  could  not  be 
gathered  up  for  us.  They  had  to  be  left  where  they 
fell.  It  was  this,  I  think,  that  first  depressed  Hall- 
muth.  He  was  always  miserable  when  he  had  no 
work  to  do. 

[243] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

"'The  weather  was  cold.  Late  in  October.  And 
rainy.  The  roads  were  full  of  refugees — mostly 
women  and  children,  some  of  them  mere  tots — 
carrying  bundles,  driving  their  sheep  and  goats 
through  the  rain  and  mud,  and  these  were  all  mixed 
up  with  army  convoys  and  retreating  troops.  Deso 
late  country.  The  villages  through  which  we  passed 
had  all  been  evacuated.  There  was,  of  course,  no 
food  to  be  bought  anywhere.  We  were  all  right. 
We  had  our  supplies.  But  these  women  and 
children!  We  could  see  them  sleeping  in  the  bare 
fields  at  night,  around  little  camp  fires,  without 
shelter,  in  the  rain,  hundreds  of  them.  Whenever 
we  halted,  Hallmuth  used  to  go  and  try  to  talk  to 
them.  Then,  one  day,  he  asked  the  major  how 
many  of  them  would  starve  to  death.  This  was 
just  before  we  got  to  Prishtina  and  we  knew  that 
every  inch  of  Serbia  was  lost.  The  major  said  that, 
all  told,  he  thought  about  half  a  million  refugees 
would  perish.  After  that  Hallmuth  never  looked 
at  them. 

"Just  outside  of  Prishtina  he  seemed  to  be  all 
in.  We  had  come  through  a  gorge  in  the  mountains, 
riding  day  and  night,  except  when  a  jam  of  traffic 
held  us  up.  We  were  on  ponies.  Very  cold.  I  had 
on  three  pairs  of  heavy  socks,  and  boots  and  over 
shoes,  but  even  so  I  had  to  wrap  my  feet  and  my 
stirrups  in  straw  and  bandages.  We  came  to  a 
high  plateau,  with  mountains  on  all  sides,  snow, 
and  a  moon  shining.  Everywhere  dead  horses, 

[244] 


DR.  ADRIAN  HALE  HALLMUTH 

dead  oxen.  The  retreat  had  been  going  on  ahead 
of  us  for  days. 

"'This  plateau,  the  major  said,  was  a  famous 
battlefield.  I  remember  he  waved  his  hand  at  it — 
he  wore  gray-woolen  socks  over  his  gloves — and  he 
turned  to  Hallmuth  to  explain  in  a  shout  that  five 
hundred  years  ago  the  Serbs  were  defeated  there 
by  the  Turks,  at  the  battle  of  Kossovo  Polye, 
which  means  "the  field  of  blackbirds."  Hallmuth 
had  been  in  a  sort  of  daze.  All  of  a  sudden  he  looked 
up  at  the  sky  as  if  he  saw  an  airplane  swooping 
down  on  him,  and  he  began  to  kick  his  heels  into  his 
horse  and  beat  it  with  his  fists  and  yell  at  it.  It 
broke  into  a  staggering  gallop  and  then  stumbled 
and  fell.  He  wasn't  hurt.  He  was  thrown  clear  of 
the  horse  and  lay  unconscious.  I  thought,  at  the 
time,  that  he  had  been  knocked  senseless  by  the 
fall.  I  found  that  he  had  only  fainted.  It  scared 
me  a  good  deal. ' ' 

Ward  looked  up  at  me  significantly,  but  made 
no  comment,  and  went  on  with  the  letter. 

"'At  Prishtina — '  No,  we  can  skip  that.  He  says 
the  Allies  didn't  arrive,  and  instead  of  going  on  south 
toward  Salonika,  they  were  ordered  to  turn  west  to 
Fetch,  at  the  foot  of  the  mountains  of  Montenegro. 

"'We  knew  this  meant  the  annihilation  of  Serbia. 
Two  hundred  thousand  men,  with  all  their  convoys, 
and  Heaven  knows  how  many  hundred  thousand 
refugees  with  all  their  carts  and  cattle,  had  to  squeeze 
through ' 

[245] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

"Yes.  Well.  Let's  see.  'Of  course,  there  weren't 
roads  enough.  We  had  to  take  to  the  fields,  follow 
ing  any  sort  of  track,  through  swamp  and  bush — 
scrub  oak — and  bowlders.  The  motor  ambulance 
could  just  make  it  and  no  more.  It  was  slow  going, 
pulling  them  out  of  mudholes  with  ox  teams,  cutting 
brush  to  get  them  across  bogs,  riding  ahead  to  find 
tracks  they  could  travel  on,  and  coming  back  to 
lead  them.  It  began  to  be  evident  that  we'd  have 
to  abandon  them  if  we  were  to  get  away  at  all. 
Hallmuth  wouldn't  hear  of  it.  It  meant  losing  all 
our  hospital  equipment.  He  worked  like  mad  to 
save  them. 

"'Then,  at  Fetch,  the  P.  M.  O.  of  the  division 
told  us  it  was  impossible  to  get  farther  with  cars. 
We  couldn't  even  make  it  with  carts,  he  said.  We'd 
have  to  pack  what  we  could  on  the  horses,  and  leave 
the  rest.  This  was  really  a  blow  to  Hallmuth.  He 
got  a  lot  of  the  instruments  out  of  their  cases  and 
put  them  in  his  rug  bag,  but,  of  course,  he  couldn't 
take  them  all.  We  hadn't  pack  saddles  enough  and 
we  needed  all  the  available  room  for  food. 

"'We  had  to  leave  our  tents,  beds,  clothes, 
cooking  dishes,  the  whole  field  kitchen,  all  our 
hospital  equipment — everything  but  food  and 
blankets  and  the  clothes  we  could  put  on.  Hallmuth 
seemed  to  regret  nothing  but  the  surgical  things. 
He  turned  away  from  them  without  a  word,  and 
as  a  matter  of  fact  he  spoke  very  little  from  that 
time  on.  We  were  getting  away  from  the  sound  of 

[246] 


DR.  ADRIAN  HALE  HALLMUTH 

German  guns,  but  he  kept  watching  the  sky  for 
airplanes 

Ward  looked  up  at  me.  I  had  nothing  to  say. 
He  went  on: 

"'He  kept  watching  the  sky  for  airplanes — 
though,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  we  saw  none  until  we 
were  bombed  by  them  after  we  were  safe  in  Medua 
on  the  other  side  of  the  mountains,  and  Hallmuth 
was  no  longer  with  us  by  then.  He  died  between 
Fetch  and  Roshai,  if  I  remember.  It's  all  as  con 
fused  as  a  nightmare  to  me.  I  didn't  make  any 
entries  in  my  diary  after  we  left  Fetch.  Even  if  I 
hadn't  been  too  tired  at  any  time  to  think  of  it,  my 
fingers  were  always  too  stiff  with  cold  to  hold  a 
pencil.  You  see,  we  weren't  going  through  the 
mountains  by  the  passes.  Those  were  so  full  of 
refugees  that  it  was  impossible  to  get  through  them. 
We  followed  trails  right  over  the  ranges,  through 
the  woods,  wading  the  streams,  and  lying  down  to 
sleep  wherever  the  nights  overtook  us,  often  without 
fires,  even,  and  sleeping  with  our  feet  against  bowl 
ders  so  we  wouldn't  slide  down  the  mountain  side 
and  roll  over  a  precipice.  When  we  had  wood  we 
melted  snow  for  water,  made  tea,  and  ate  some  of 
our  tinned  stuff,  but  we  often  had  nothing  for  our 
ponies  except  beech  leaves  that  we  dug  out  from 
under  the  snow,  and  there  were  days  when  we  were 
all  so  weak  with  exhaustion  that  I  don't  know  how 
we  ever  got  through. 

"'We  were  in  no   danger  of  losing  our  way. 

[247] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

Hundreds  of  straggling  soldiers  and  thousands  of 
peasants  were  toiling  along  before  and  behind  us. 
And  the  dead  lay  all  along  the  track.  Worse  than 
the  dead  were  the  dying — men  and  women  and 
children,  sometimes  in  groups,  sometimes  a  man 
or  a  woman  alone,  too  weak  to  crawl  any  farther. 
We  had  to  pretend  we  didn't  see  them,  and  hurry 
by.  Hallmuth  no  longer  paid  any  attention  to  them. 
He  was  terribly  despondent  about  the  war — about 
everything.  I  spoke  to  him  about  the  awful  loss  of 
life,  and  he  said,  "All  the  years  that  we've  been 
fighting  to  save  lives,  and  they  throw  away  more 
here  in  an  hour!  What  was  the  use?  Our  lives 
have  been  wasted!"  Most  of  the  time  we  were  too 
dazed  and  tired  to  talk. 

"'His  death  happened  this  way.  At  dusk  on 
the  5th  or  6th  of  December  we  were  climbing 
along  the  side  of  a  slope  with  a  wood  below  us, 
and  below  the  wood  was  a  stream  bed.  We  de 
cided  to  camp  for  the  night  in  the  dry  bed  of  the 
stream,  and  the  order  was  given  to  turn  aside  and 
drop  down  through  the  wood  and  reassemble  in 
the  stream  bed.  It  was  every  man  for  himself. 
There  was  from  a  foot  to  three  feet  of  snow  among 
the  trees,  and  under  the  snow  were  bowlders  and 
fallen  tree  trunks.  The  branches  of  the  trees  were 
low  enough  to  brush  you  out  of  the  saddle,  and 
the  ponies  slipped  and  slid  down  steep  places.  I 
was  thrown  twice,  and  I  finished  the  descent  on 
foot,  with  the  pony  following  me. 

[248] 


DR.  ADRIAN  HALE  HALLMUTH 

"*It  was  dark  before  I  got  to  the  bottom.  Cam 
eron  was  standing  on  a  rock — the  bed  of  the  stream 
was  not  dry;  it  was  full  of  half -frozen  mud — and  he 
was  shouting  and  blowing  his  whistle  to  guide  the 
rest  of  us  to  him.  We  all  arrived  except  Hallmuth. 
We  started  to  search  for  him  after  a  while,  but  we 
had  only  oil  enough  for  one  of  our  lamps,  and  we 
took  turns,  two  or  three  of  us  going  together  in 
shifts.  I  don't  know  about  the  others,  but  I  was  so 
tired  that  I  just  walked  in  my  sleep.  I  had  to  give 
it  up  and  lie  down  by  the  camp  fire,  but  I  woke  at 
daybreak,  and  when  I  heard  that  he  had  not  been 
found  I  started  right  out  again. 

"  'The  sun  was  up  when  I  came  on  him,  sitting 
against  a  bowlder  beside  his  dead  pony.  It  had 
evidently  fallen  under  him,  but  he  had  got  up  and 
walked  five  or  six  feet  before  he  sat  down.  We 
could  not  find  any  sign  of  injury  on  him.  He  was 
sitting  hatless,  with  his  hands  thrust  deep  into  the 
snow  on  either  side  of  him,  staring  ahead  of  him. 
I  came  crawling  right  up  a  steep  place  toward  him 
without  seeing  him.  I  was  looking  for  his  tracks, 
and  I  climbed  up  over  a  bowlder  and  stopped  to 
examine  the  print  of  a  bird's  feet  in  the  snow  on  top 
of  the  bowlder.  I  was  interested  because  we  had  not 
seen  any  birds  large  enough  to  be  worth  shooting, 
and  this  was  evidently  a  big  one.  Then  I  raised 
my  eyes  and  saw  him  watching  me.  I  thought  by 
his  look  that  I  had  frightened  him.  He  was  staring 
right  at  me.  I  said:  "What's  the  matter,  Doctor? 

[249] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

Did  I  scare  you  ?  "  Then  I  realized  that  he  was  dead. 
He  looked  as  if  something  had  scared  him  to  death. 
He  had  been  dead  about  twelve  hours,  I  should  say. 
Heart  failure,  Cameron  said,  due  to  exhaustion  and 
exposure." 

Ward  laid  down  the  letter.    "  Well? " 


VII.    VANCE  COPE 


IT  was  not  so  much  an  automobile  as  a  triumphal 
car — bright  with  the  theatrical  resplendence  of 
a  stage  super's  chain  mail — an  armored  car  of  pol 
ished  metal,  angular,  with  conspicuous  rivet  heads 
along  the  seams  of  its  hood.  It  did  not  appear  to 
go  on  wheels,  but  to  float  forward,  through  respect 
ful  space,  on  a  subdued  murmur  of  cosmic  power. 
It  had  suddenly  turned  the  corner  of  Sunset  Boule 
vard  and  caught  us  crossing  its  path;  and  it  bore 
down  on  us  like  a  combination  of  the  German  army 
and  the  day  of  judgment.  We  stood  helpless,  petri 
fied,  fascinated,  unable  to  escape. 

Then  some  miracle  happened.  It  did  not  seem  to 
notice  us,  but  it  stopped  haughtily,  withholding  its 
might.  We  had  time  to  jump  back  out  of  its  way. 
It  proceeded,  without  effort,  without  remark,  aristo 
cratically  ignoring  the  fact  that  it  had  saved  our 
lives.  It  did  not  wish  to  acknowledge  any  show  of 
gratitude  from  us,  possibly.  It  was  above  that  sort 
of  cheap  emotionalism. 

So  were  the  Japanese  chauffeur  and  the  footman 

in  livery  who  reigned  together  on  its  front  seat,  as 

sacerdotal   and   aloof   as   two   minor   stone   gods 

guarding  the  portals  of  an  Egyptian  temple.    The 

17  [251] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

chief  divinity  was  behind  them,  in  the  shadows  of 
the  closed  limousine,  his  soft  hat  drawn  down  on  his 
eyebrows,  staring  ahead  of  him  in  a  Napoleonic 
gloom,  pallid,  frowning,  and  yet,  it  seemed  to  me, 
self-conscious.  He  had  the  look  of  make-believe 
that  you  see  on  the  stern  mouth  of  a  child  who  is 
playing  soldiers. 

He  was  borne  slowly  by,  in  his  imperial  ease,  and 
Gadkin  said  :  "  That's  him!     That's  Cope  !  " 


We  had  been  talking  of  him.  Inevitably.  We 
were  in  Los  Angeles,  and  Gadkin  was  a  moving- 
picture  actor.  You  could  as  easily  be  in  Washington, 
in  the  old  days,  and  not  talk  of  Theodore  Roosevelt 
to  a  politician.  Added  to  that,  I  had  come  to  Holly 
wood  to  try  to  write  a  scenario  for  Cope,  and  I  was 
much  more  eager  to  hear  about  him  and  to  do  him  — 
to  write  him  up  for  a  magazine  —  than  to  do  his 
scenario.  I  felt  that  his  history  —  his  spiritual 
history  —  and  the  progress  of  his  mental  and  moral 
development  were  truly  matters  of  public  concern. 
And  I  still  feel  that  they  are  so. 

Or  they  ought  to  be  so.  I  suppose  the  truth  is 
that  civilization  is  never  able  to  keep  up,  mentally, 
with  its  own  growth  and  change.  We  devote  a 
mediaeval  amount  of  attention  to  the  occupants  of 
our  old  official  thrones  and  quite  ignore  the  new 
controlling  powers  that  stand  at  the  royal  elbow. 

[252] 


VANCE  COPE 


The  books  on  Roosevelt  are  now  filling  a  memorial 
library,  and  what  the  newspapers  printed  about 
him,  in  his  day,  if  properly  chopped  and  macerated, 
would  overflow  all  the  corn  silos  in  the  state  of 
Kansas;  yet,  of  the  men  and  women  who  really 
made  the  public  opinion  that  created  Roosevelt, 
what  is  there  in  print?  And  what  of  Vance  Cope, 
who,  in  any  theatrical  season,  affects  an  audience 
as  large  as  the  accumulated  audiences  of  Shake 
speare's  three  centuries — and  inspires  as  much  ani 
mating  emotion  in  a  year  as  Roosevelt  provoked  in 
thirty — and  forms  the  practical  ideals  of  more  young 
Americans  in  an  afternoon  than  all  the  politicians, 
preachers,  teachers,  and  professors  of  all  the  parties, 
churches,  schools,  and  colleges  from  here  to  Holly 
wood? 

You  know,  really,  this  man  has  a  terrifying  power. 
He  controls  a  human  Niagara  Falls  of  feeling.  It 
is  very  picturesque  and  sesthetical  to  write  of  him 
and  his  output  in  terms  of  art  criticism,  but  there 
is  another  aspect  to  his  activity.  He  is  turning 
how  many  million  human  power-wheels  and  pro 
ducing  how  many  billion  volts  and  amperes  of 
moral  energy  and  emotional  charge? 

I  am  not  pleading  for  any  moralistic  consideration 
of  his  work.  We  have  had  plenty  of  that — of  the 
conventional  kind — busy  with  appearances.  In  his 
"Samson  and  Delilah"  and  again  in  his  "Antony 
and  Cleopatra,"  it  was  the  appearance  of  the  human 
body  that  startled  the  world.  In  "  Manon  Lescaut " 

[253] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

the  bodies  were  satisfactorily  muffled  up,  but  naked 
human  passions  came  into  public  sight,  to  the  horror 
of  the  moralists.  In  "Her  Fine  Feathers"  they 
were  scandalized  to  see  that  life  went  on  after 
sunset — "night  life,"  they  called  it,  shuddering. 
Engaged  in  censoring  these  appearances,  they 
missed  the  true  point  and  moral  of  all  four  films, 
which  was  that  woman  is  always  the  enemy  of  man, 
his  trap  and  betrayer,  whether  she  be  Delilah,  or 
Cleopatra,  or  Manon  destroying  her  lover,  or  the 
spendthrift  wife  in  "Her  Fine  Feathers"  bankrupt 
ing  her  fond  American  husband. 

That  was  a  useful  poison  to  be  pumping  into  the 
young  American  male  mind,  wasn't  it?  I  thought 
so.  And  I  thought  it  might  be  worth  while  to 
discover  why  Cope  was  so  full  of  this  antique 
masculine  fear  of  woman.  I  believed  that  if  I  could 
trace  the  origin  of  the  disease  in  him,  and  show  that 
it  was  a  disease — that  it  was  a  morbid  exaggeration 
of  a  subconscious  sex  fear  as  old  as  the  myth  about 
Adam  and  Eve — the  information  might  make  it 
more  difficult  for  Cope  to  spread  his  infection  in  the 
cinema  theater. 

Gadkin  helped  me,  at  once,  unwittingly.  He  had 
some  of  the  information  that  I  needed.  He  had 
known  Cope  in  early  boyhood,  in  Chicago,  where 
Gadkin  had  been  a  young  actor  and  Cope  an  usher, 
after  school  hours,  in  the  theater  in  which  Gadkin 
played  his  first  speaking  part.  Gadkin  was  the 
elder.  Cope  had  sought  him  out,  with  the  timid 

[254] 


VANCE  COPE 


persistence  of  a  boyish  hero  worship,  and  Gadkin 
had  patronized  him  and  encouraged  him.  When 
Gadkin,  in  the  natural  course  of  his  ambition, 
moved  on  to  New  York,  he  assisted  Cope  to  follow 
him,  got  Cope  work  as  a  super,  taught  him  some  of 
the  mysteries  of  theatrical  make-up,  found  him  a 
cheap  boarding  house  to  live  in,  and  generally 
showed  him  the  ropes. 

Gadkin  told  of  it  with  angry  accusations  of  in 
gratitude,  because  Cope  and  he  had  subsequently 
quarreled.  His  story  consisted  more  of  emotion 
than  of  biographic  fact.  He  was  an  artist,  not  a 
historian.  Like  an  epic  poet,  he  began  in  the  middle 
and  pursued  his  narrative  in  both  directions  at  once. 
He  jeered  and  laughed  and  cursed  and  was  contemp 
tuous.  He  did  not  understand  Cope  at  all.  Indeed, 
he  misunderstood  Cope  bitterly.  But  in  the  midst 
of  all  his  impassioned  ignorance  about  Cope,  he  had 
several  significant  clues  to  an  explanation  of  Cope's 
character — without  knowing  that  he  had  them. 


Cope's  boyhood,  for  example.  It  was  easy  to 
reconstruct  some  of  that  from  Gadkin's  misappre 
hensions. 

Vance  Cope — John  Vincent  Cope — Vinny  Cope, 
in  his  childhood — was  the  son  of  a  commercial 
traveler  and  an  actress  of  a  sort.  He  was  born  in 
Chicago  about  1880,  arid  he  lost  his  legal  father  in 

[255] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

his  infancy,  after  a  matrimonial  quarrel  which  he 
remembered  as  an  angry  argument,  a  violent  exit, 
and  the  entrance  of  a  new  dad.  He  did  not  like  his 
second  father,  and  the  relationship  did  not  last  long, 
though  it  apparently  lasted  long  enough  for  the  boy 
to  mark  himself  as  an  impediment  to  a  mother  who 
was  inclined  to  seek  sentimental  adventures  of  a 
remunerative  issue.  He  was  sickly,  and  she  was 
robustiously  indifferent  and  neglectful  of  him.  He 
thought  her  beautiful.  She  did  not  conceal  it  from 
him  that  she  found  him  ridiculously  spindling  and 
gawky.  "At  her  best,"  Gadkin  said,  "I  don't 
believe  she  was  ever  more  than  a  show  girl.  She'd 
deserted  him  before  I  knew  him.  Said  she  was 
going  on  tour,  and  never  came  back." 

She  probably  resented  the  fact  that  her  life  was 
in  danger  of  being  censored — like  the  plot  of  a  latter- 
day  movie — so  as  to  make  it  worthy  of  the  admira 
tion  of  childish  innocence.  She  had  no  relatives 
to  leave  him  with,  so  she  abandoned  him  to  the 
mercies  of  a  boarding  house,  where  she  paid  for 
him  when  she  had  the  money,  but  left  him  usually 
penniless.  The  public  schools  tried  to  give  him  a 
free  education,  but  they  did  not  succeed  in  giving 
him  any  appetite  for  their  prescribed  information. 
It  followed  that  while  he  was  still  nominally  at 
school  he  began  to  work  as  a  theater  usher  in  the 
evenings  and  on  matinee  afternoons. 

It  followed,  also,  that  he  became  a  sensitive, 
imaginative,  lonely  minded  boy,  physically  inade- 

[256] 


VANCE  COPE 


quate  to  life,  starved  in  his  affections,  afraid  of  his 
school  companions,  and  carrying  himself  with  an 
offensive  trembling  pride  that  was  intended  to  con 
ceal  his  fear.  On  a  Sunday,  in  Chicago,  wandering 
around  the  streets,  full  of  adolescent  melancholy, 
he  envied  the  family  groups  that  he  saw  on  their 
way  to  church;  and  his  envy  expressed  itself  to 
Gadkin  as  a  feeling  of  superiority  to  these  poor 
human  sheep,  passing  him  in  flocks,  as  if  bell- 
wethered  by  a  church  chime.  This  attitude  of 
contempt,  resented  by  his  classmates,  brought  him 
most  of  the  persecutions  from  which  he  suffered  in 
school.  It  was  a  pose  that  quite  deceived  Gadkin. 
Gadkin,  I  imagine,  was  flattered  by  the  adulation 
of  so  haughty  a  critic  of  the  rest  of  the  world.  He 
did  not  suspect  that  Cope's  criticism,  like  so  much 
of  its  kind  in  artists  and  writers,  was  the  self- 
protective  attack — the  militarist's  "offensive  de 
fensive" — of  sensitive  weakness. 

And  he  saw  as  merely  laughable  Cope's  earliest 
known  adventure  in  love. 

In  the  theater  in  which  Cope  first  began  to  work 
as  an  usher  there  was  an  actress  of  no  great  popu 
larity,  old  enough  to  be  his  mother.  He  must  have 
adored  her  for  some  time  obscurely,  from  the  back 
of  the  house,  before  he  began  to  imitate  the  homage 
of  open  admiration  in  the  theater,  by  bringing 
flowers  to  the  footlights  for  her.  They  were  ex 
pensive  bouquets  of  roses,  and  though  they  arrived 
only  once  a  week,  anonymously,  on  Saturday  nights, 

[257] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

they  cost  him  most  of  his  small  weekly  salary.  The 
third  time  that  he  came  down  the  aisle,  pale,  with 
his  tribute,  she  sent  her  maid  to  ask  him  who  had 
given  him  the  flowers.  There  was  no  card  in  them, 
and  an  envious  leading  man  had  spread  the  rumor 
that  she  was  sending  flowers  to  herself. 

Cope  was  coolly  mysterious  and  uncommunica 
tive  with  her  maid,  and  he  was  summoned  to  his 
idol's  dressing  room  after  the  performance;  but  by 
that  time  he  had  his  story  ready.  A  rich  romantic 
youth  had  been  giving  him  the  roses  with  instruc 
tions  not  to  tell  where  they  came  from.  No,  he 
could  not  say  where  this  ardent  stranger  sat;  he 
sat  in  different  places  at  different  times.  Yes,  he 
was  there  every  night,  but  it  was  only  on  Saturday 
nights  that  he  brought  roses.  No,  he  couldn't  point 
him  out  to  her.  He  had  promised  not  to. 

He  was  vague  and  agitated  and,  in  one  respect, 
rather  queer;  he  refused  to  take  a  tip  from  her  and 
seemed  pained  that  she  should  offer  it.  When  she 
pressed  it  on  him  he  backed  out  of  the  room  with 
a  reproachful  expression  of  face. 

She  must  have  felt  that  there  was  something 
wrong,  for  she  did  not  speak  of  the  interview  to 
anyone.  It  was  her  maid  who  talked,  and  the 
leading  man  who  investigated.  He  set  the  com 
pany's  press  agent  to  watch  Cope;  and  on  the  fol 
lowing  Saturday  night,  when  Cope  arrived  with  his 
roses  under  his  overcoat,  the  press  agent  had  seen 
him  buy  them.  Before  the  curtain  rose  on  the 

[258] 


VANCE  COPE 


second  act  every  member  of  the  company  on  the 
stage  had  heard  the  story.  None  of  them  believed 
that  Cope  had  been  buying  the  flowers  with  his  own 
money;  naturally,  they  supposed  that  the  actress 
herself  had  been  paying  for  them.  In  the  final  scene 
of  the  act,  just  before  the  curtain  fell,  the  leading 
man  whispered  to  her,  "Your  flowers  are  here!" 
The  others  alarmed  her  with  sly,  cynical  smiles. 
When  Cope  started  down  the  aisle  with  his  offering, 
they  were  all  watching  for  him,  and  they  greeted 
him  with  titters. 

She  pretended  not  to  see  him.  Cope  reached  his 
bouquet  up  to  the  footlights,  trembling,  aware  that 
she  was  ignoring  him  and  more  horribly  aware  that 
all  the  others  on  the  stage  were  grinning  at  him. 
He  knew  that  the  audience  would  realize  something 
was  wrong,  and  he  felt  them  staring  at  his  back 
while  they  applauded.  He  stood  there,  painfully 
conspicuous,  holding  up  his  foolish  bouquet  even 
while  the  curtain  fell  and  rose  again.  The  leading 
man  came  forward  at  last,  and  took  the  flowers  from 
him  and  offered  them  to  her  elaborately,  but  she 
ignored  them,  bowing  to  the  audience,  who  had 
begun  to  laugh  without  knowing  why.  The  leading 
man  gave  the  roses  to  the  comedian,  who  mugged 
and  simpered  over  them.  The  house  roared.  The 
actress  darted  a  malignant  look  of  fury  at  Cope. 
He  fled  up  the  aisle  through  what  seemed  to  him 
a  din  of  public  ridicule. 

The  press  agent  said  something  to  him  at  the 

[259] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

back  of  the  house,  but  Cope  was  too  confused  to  do 
more  than  recognize  the  expression  of  derision.  He 
rushed  to  get  his  overcoat  and  ran  from  the  theater. 
And  he  never  returned.  It  was  in  another  Chicago 
theater  that  Gadkin  met  him  and  befriended  him. 


4 

Gadkin,  as  I  have  said,  saw  this  incident  as  merely 
laughable.  He  was  perhaps  blind  to  its  importance, 
because  Cope  himself  spoke  of  it  with  laughter  when 
he  told  Gadkin  of  it,  years  after  the  event.  But 
Gadkin  related  Cope's  second  sentimental  adven 
ture  with  the  same  stupid  amusement,  although, 
in  its  setting  and  its  result,  it  paralleled  the  first  so 
exactly  that  even  Gadkin  might  have  divined  the 
existence  of  a  predetermining  cause,  in  Cope  him 
self,  for  both  the  scenes. 

The  second  incident  happened  in  New  York. 
When  Gadkin  arrived  there,  in  the  autumn  of  1900, 
he  got  a  small  part  in  a  play  about  royalty  at  the 
old  Lyceum  Theater,  on  Fourth  Avenue.  And 
when  Cope  followed  Gadkin  from  Chicago,  Gad- 
kin's  influence  with  the  stage  manager  of  the  play 
pushed  Cope  into  a  convenient  vacancy  among 
the  court  uniforms  that  adorned  the  third  act.  The 
leading  woman  of  that  play — as  you  perhaps  re 
member — was  little  Janet  Nast  in  the  role  of  the 
Princess  Aline;  and  the  play  was  "Her  Royal 
Happiness."  You  may  have  forgotten  that  it  was 

[260] 


VANCE  COPE 


in  the  film  version  of  "Her  Royal  Happiness"  that 
Cope  subsequently  began  his  career  as  a  movie 
director,  with  Janet  Nast  as  his  star.  The  coin 
cidence  is  not  accidental.  Neither  was  the  play's 
failure  on  the  stage  accidental,  nor  its  later  success 
on  the  screen.  All  these  developments  were  inherent 
in  the  incidents  that  occurred  during  Cope's  one 
night  on  the  Lyceum  stage. 

"Her  Royal  Happiness"  had  been  billed  as  a 
"romantic  comedy,"  and  there  was  probably  no 
intentional  deception  in  the  phrase,  but  the  play 
wright  was  an  Englishman,  and  he  could  have  had 
no  conception  of  how  romantically  romantic  the 
true  American  is  in  his  imaginative  intercourse  with 
kings  and  queens.  Americans  get  their  first  idea 
of  royalty  from  childhood's  fairy  tales;  and,  through 
out  their  lives,  in  spite  of  their  adult  better  sense, 
every  son  of  a  throne  carries  for  them  some  of  the 
glamour  of  a  fairy  prince,  and  every  royal  daughter 
is  apt  to  move  them  to  mystical  protective  dotings. 
Futhermore,  the  Americans  of  1900  had  been  drink 
ing  deep  of  the  royalistic  distillations  of  Anthony 
Hope  and  Stanley  Weyman  and  Maurice  Hewlett 
and  the  authors  of  To  Have  and  To  Hold  and  //  / 
Were  King  and  When  Knighthood  was  in  Flower — 
to  name  only  a  few  of  the  most  potent.  For  some 
hidden  reason — a  reason  that  was  connected  perhaps 
with  a  surfeit  of  commercial  success  and  of  devotion 
to  McKinley's  "full  dinner  pail" — the  production 
of  court  romances  had  become  a  national  industry 

[261] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

second  only  to  the  manufacture  of  patent  aids  to 
indigestion.  The  output  of  American  humor  as  an 
antidote  to  psychic  distress  was  a  poor  third;  even 
Mark  Twain  had  been  writing  Joan  of  Arc. 

With  such  an  audience,  the  English  author  of 
"Her  Royal  Happiness"  made  a  fatal  mistake  when 
he  wrote  about  royalty  in  a  manner  that  was 
mildly  satirical.  He  drew  his  king  as  an  amiable 
crowned  bonehead  who  did  and  said  whatever  he 
was  told  to  do  and  say  by  various  polite  but  de 
cided  public  officials.  The  queen  ruled  the  palace 
as  the  politicians  ruled  the  kingdom;  and  the  whole 
royal  family  was  disappointingly  human  and  do 
mestic.  The  little  Princess  Aline  was  somewhat 
more  to  the  popular  taste,  because  she  was  saved  to 
romance  by  Janet  Nast's  prettified  stage  affecta 
tions  and  by  the  inability  of  any  self-respecting 
author  of  that  day  to  make  a  young  girl  human; 
but  here  again  there  was  a  damning  flaw.  In  the 
first  act  she  gave  her  heart  to  a  secret  playmate, 
who  was  the  son  of  the  lodgekeeper  or  something 
equally  low;  and  in  the  last  act  she  was  compelled 
to  betroth  herself  to  Prince  Albert  of  Aquitania, 
and  to  sacrifice  her  royal  love  to  her  royal  duty. 
Gosh! 

The  play  had  been  slowly  dying  of  these  congeni 
tal  defects  for  a  month  or  more  when  Cope  came 
into  it.  His  participation  was  not  obtained  with 
any  hope  that  he  might  make  a  difference.  On  the 
previous  night  one  of  the  supers  had  hung  up  his 

[262] 


VANCE  COPE 


aide-de-camp's  uniform  in  the  supers'  dressing  room 
and  announced  to  the  captain  that  he  was  through — 
his  brother  had  got  him  a  government  job  on  a  mail 
wagon — and  by  virtue  of  Gadkin's  backing,  Cope 
came  in  to  fill  the  empty  clothes.  That  was  all. 

Gadkin  brought  him  to  the  theater  in  the  after 
noon,  and  showed  him  how  to  make  up,  and  helped 
him  into  his  costume,  and  explained  to  him  where 
he  was  to  enter,  and  picked  out  the  place  where  he 
was  to  stand  on  the  stage.  There  was  no  difficulty 
about  the  part;  he  was  one  of  a  dozen  supers  who 
were  to  come  on  the  stage  together,  stand  as  a  court 
chorus  for  fifteen  minutes  in  a  throne-room  scene, 
and  follow  their  leader  out  when  the  scene  was 
ended.  And  there  was  no  difficulty  about  his  cos 
tume;  it  was  a  becoming  uniform  of  robin's-egg  blue 
and  it  almost  fitted  him  when  he  inflated  his  thorax 
so  as  to  take  up  the  wrinkled  slack  in  the  white 
plastron  that  buttoned  across  his  breast  like  a 
fencer's  chest  pad.  There  was  some  unromantic  bag- 
giness  about  the  trousers — and  he  could  not  inflate 
his  legs — but  the  supers'  mirror  did  not  show  him 
below  the  belt,  and  Gadkin  made  no  criticisms. 

Gadkin  wanted  Cope  to  hear  him  during  the  one 
speaking  moment  that  the  play  allowed  him,  in  the 
second  act,  so  he  arranged  that  Cope  should  have  a 
seat  in  the  back  of  the  house  during  the  first  part 
of  the  performance.  It  would  be  well  for  Cope  to 
know  what  the  play  was  about,  anyway;  it  would 
help  him  to  look  his  part  in  the  third;  and  he  could 

[263] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

find  his  way  to  his  dressing  room,  toward  the  end 
of  the  second  act,  in  time  to  be  made  up  and  in  his 
place  when  the  curtain  rose  for  the  throne-room 
scene. 

These  arrangements  seemed  quite  innocent  and 
intelligent,  and  Gadkin  did  not  suspect  that  there 
was  anything  dangerous  in  them  until  he  went  to 
the  supers'  dressing  room  to  see  Cope,  just  before 
the  second  curtain,  and  found  that  Cope  had  not 
yet  arrived.  Gadkin  was  himself  in  costume,  so  he 
could  not  go  out  front  to  warn  Cope  that  he  must 
hurry.  At  the  last  possible  minute  he  bribed  the 
call  boy  to  find  Cope  and  bring  him  through  the 
stage  door  behind  one  of  the  first  tiers  of  boxes;  but 
the  curtain  was  down  a  long  time  before  the  boy 
returned  with  Cope,  dazed  and  bewildered-looking, 
and  silent  under  Gadkin's  angry  remonstrances. 

"He  looked  doped,"  Gadkin  described  it.  "I 
almost  had  to  put  his  clothes  on  him.  I  did  have  to 
button  them.  There  wasn't  time  to  make  him  up 
properly,  and  he  had  to  follow  the  others  upstairs 
with  his  sword  belt  in  his  hands.  I  got  it  buckled 
on  him  in  the  wings  just  as  the  curtain  rang  up,  and 
I  shoved  him  into  the  procession.  The  stage  man 
ager  bawled  him  out,  and  so  did  I,  but  he  didn't 
seem  to  hear  us." 

The  throne-room  scene  was  the  big  emotional 
scene  of  the  play.  It  began  with  some  impressive 
court  pomp  that  led  up  to  a  speech  from  the  throne 
in  which  the  king  announced  the  happy  composition 

[264] 


VANCE  COPE 


of  all  his  differences  with  the  neighboring  kingdom 
of  Aquitania.  (Aquitania  had  been  threatening  war 
for  two  acts.)  A  treaty  of  alliance  had  now  been 
arranged  between  the  two  countries  and  all  dis 
puted  territory  ceded  to  his  crown.  To  cement  the 
alliance,  His  Royal  Highness  the  Crown  Prince 
Albert  Adolf  George  Charles  Rudolf  of  Aquitania, 
etc.,  had  sought  in  marriage  the  hand  of  Her  Royal 
Highness  Princess  Margaret  Ottillia  Christina  Eliza 
beth  Constantia  Helena  Aline,  etc.,  etc.  His  Im 
perial  Majesty  was  graciously  pleased  to  inform  his 
loyal  subjects  that  the  Princess  Aline  had  deigned 
to  look  with  favor  on  the  royal  prince  of  Aquitania — • 
or  something  of  that  sort.  And  then  little  Janet 
Nast  cried  out,  thrillingly,  "No!" 

In  those  days  Janet  Nast  could  act.  Her  young 
imagination  had  not  yet  been  wholly  stifled  by  the 
growth  of  self -consciousness  that  afterward  incased 
and  hardened  on  her.  She  could  throw  herself  into 
her  speech  of  revolt  with  a  high  passion,  girlish  and 
regal  and  pathetic,  her  voice  breaking  even  while 
her  words  were  defiant,  and  her  head  up,  though 
she  wept.  Ordinarily,  she  would  have  carried  her 
audience  into  a  storm  of  applause;  they  wept  and 
palpitated  with  her,  as  it  was;  but  the  playwright, 
at  the  top  of  the  excitement,  had  given  the  king  a 
ridiculously  human  line;  and  all  the  heroic  emotions 
of  the  audience  got  relief  in  a  shout  of  laughter. 
The  embarrassment  of  the  court  was  equally  laugh 
able.  They  were  funny  in  their  polite  attempts  to 

[265] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

suppress  their  excitement  and  to  escape  as  incon 
spicuously  as  possible  from  the  scene  of  a  royal 
family  quarrel.  The  queen  was  comic  in  her 
domestic  anger,  blaming  the  henpecked  king;  and 
when  she  swept  out  and  left  him  to  discipline  his 
offspring,  the  stage  should  have  been  empty  for  the 
prettily  pathetic  scene  between  father  and  daughter 
that  was  to  be  followed  by  the  meeting  of  the 
princess  and  her  boyish  sweetheart,  and  his  renunci 
ation  of  her,  and  all  the  rest  of  it. 

The  stage  should  have  been  empty,  I  say — but 
Cope,  in  his  aide-de-camp's  uniform,  was  standing 
obstinately  in  his  place  beside  the  door  at  the  left. 
He  had  remained  behind  when  the  others  of  the 
court  had  abandoned  the  princess  to  her  fate.  The 
queen  had  seen  him  from  across  the  stage,  but  her 
lines  had  been  too  quick  and  angry  to  allow  her  to 
change  her  exit  so  as  to  take  him  off  with  her.  She 
had  stormed  out  through  the  door  right,  and  then 
run  to  warn  the  stage  manager.  And  when  the 
king  began  his  scene  with  his  daughter  the  stage 
manager  was  audibly  cursing  Cope  through  the 
open  doorway  and  pleading  with  him  to  come  off 
the  stage. 

"Cope  looked  as  if  he  were  hypnotized,"  Gadkin 
said,  "and  his  eyes  were  full  of  tears,  and  he  was 
trembling,  and  you  couldn't  seem  to  make  him  hear 
a  thing.  He  wasn't  going  to  leave  the  princess  to 
be  forced  into  a  loveless  marriage,  and  that's  all 
there  was  to  it.  Funny!  It  was  so  funny  it  nearly 

[266] 


VANCE  COPE 


ruined  the  play.  If  Charlie  Chatterton  hadn't  been 
so  clever  they'd  have  had  to  ring  the  curtain 
down." 

Chatterton  was  playing  the  king.  When  he  saw 
that  Cope  was  still  there,  after  his  first  few  lines,  he 
crossed  to  Cope  and  took  him  by  the  elbow,  and  said, 
sauvely,  "I  trust,  my  dear  count,  that  you  will  not 
report  this  unfortunate  incident  to  His  Royal  High 
ness  until  I've  had  time  to — to — ah — "  And  at 
that  point  he  led  Cope  through  the  door  and  gave 
him  to  the  stage  manager. 

The  stage  manager  caught  him  by  the  collar  and 
rushed  him  to  the  dressing-room  stairs,  and  all  but 
threw  him  down  into  the  basement.  "You're  fired 
— both  of  you,"  he  told  Gadkin;  and  Gadkin  flared 
up  and  argued  with  him,  forgetting  Cope  in  his  own 
quarrel.  He  followed  the  stage  manager  to  his 
room,  and  they  fought  out  their  anger  there,  behind 
closed  doors.  When  they  had  arrived  at  laughter 
and  apologies — ("After  all,  it  was  a  hell  of  a  com 
pliment  to  Janie  Nast's  acting") — he  went  to  find 
Cope,  but  Cope  had  gone.  His  uniform  of  robin's- 
egg  blue  was  hanging  on  its  hook  and  he  had 
vanished. 

5 

He  had  gone  to  kill  himself.  Only  by  killing  him 
self  could  he  make  Janet  Nast  understand  the  devo 
tion  that  had  inspired  him  to  refuse  to  turn  from 
her  on  the  stage.  Only  so  could  he  make  her  appre- 

18  [  267  ] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

ciate  his  holy  and  uplifted  yearning  to  distinguish 
himself  before  her,  no  matter  how  madly — to  com 
pel  her  to  look  at  him  and  be  aware  of  him  even  if 
he  had  to  stop  the  play.  He  had  wanted  to  be  able 
to  say  to  her:  "You  were  so  wonderful,  I  couldn't — 
I  couldn't  turn  away."  And  underneath  this  im 
pulse  of  fascinated  egotism  there  was  another  emo 
tion.  All  through  the  first  two  acts  he  had  been  her 
boyish  lover,  the  lodgekeeper's  son.  He  had  been 
ready  to  storm  the  world  and  tear  down  every 
barrier  of  circumstance  in  order  to  win  her.  The 
final  scene  of  the  second  act  had  warned  him  that 
she  was  to  be  given  to  Prince  Albert  of  Aquitania, 
and  he  had  revolted  against  that  frustration,  as  the 
whole  disappointed  audience  had  revolted  against 
it.  When  she  rose  with  her  eloquent  protest  and 
cried,  "No!"  he  had  started  and  stiffened  and 
exulted  for  her.  It  was  impossible  for  him  to  desert 
her  then.  Hypnotized?  Yes,  but  aware  of  what  he 
was  doing,  and  determined  to  go  through  with  it, 
though  the  whole  court  turned  against  him  and  tried 
to  hoot  him  off  the  stage. 

It  was  not  until  he  was  thrust  down  the  basement 
stairs,  and  tripped  over  his  sword,  and  fell  sprawling 
on  the  cement  floor  outside  the  supers'  dressing  room 
— it  was  not  till  the  physical  shock  of  this  outrage 
awoke  him  from  his  dream — that  he  realized  how 
absurd  he  must  have  seemed  to  her.  To  her!  He 
did  not  care  about  the  others;  he  was  not  conscious 
of  them;  he  did  not  even  see  the  supers  in  the  dress- 

[268] 


VANCE  COPE 


ing  room;  he  did  not  hear  their  puzzled  questions. 
But  absurd  to  her!  No,  that  was  not  to  be  endured. 
And  the  only  way  for  him  to  check  her  laughter  was 
to  kill  himself.  Then  she  would  understand.  Then 
she  would  appreciate  what  he  was,  what  he  had  felt 
for  her,  what  an  indignity  had  been  put  upon  his 
devotion  to  her.  Then  she  would  realize — they 
would  all  realize — that  this  thing  had  not  been  a  silly 
farce,  but  a  noble  and  appalling  tragedy. 

When  he  left  the  theater,  he  was  no  longer  ex 
cited.  All  his  emotion  seemed  to  have  passed.  He 
had  never  felt  more  cool  and  determined  in  his  life. 
He  turned  west  on  Twenty-third  Street,  to  make  his 
way  to  the  Hudson  River  and  drown  himself.  He 
would  not  take  poison;  he  was  not  sure  that  a  drug 
gist  would  sell  it  to  him.  He  would  not  shoot  him 
self;  he  had  never  handled  firearms,  and  he  did  not 
know  where  to  buy  a  revolver.  Drowning  was  not 
only  the  easiest  and  surest  way;  it  was  the  most 
poetic.  They  would  find  him  in  the  Morgue,  un- 
disfigured,  peaceful,  with  an  expression  of  calm 
pride  on  his  cold  lips. 

That  thought  of  his  body  in  the  Morgue  and  the 
sight  of  some  pink-silk  underwear  in  a  haber 
dasher's  window  combined  to  remind  him  that  his 
underclothes  were  unpresentable.  His  elbows  had 
worn  holes  in  the  sleeves  of  his  undershirt.  He  had 
only  recently  cut  off  the  legs  of  his  winter  drawers 
at  the  knees,  because  his  kneecaps  had  come  through 
them.  These  were  not  garments  that  would  look 

[269] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

well  in  a  morgue.  The  pink-silk  ones  were  the 
proper  thing.  He  would  die  like  a  gentleman. 

It  took  all  but  his  last  two  dollars  to  buy  them, 
and  then  he  had  to  go  back  to  his  room  to  put  them 
on.  He  marked  them  with  his  name  in  ink,  so  that 
there  might  be  no  doubt  of  his  identity,  and  he 
slipped  them  on  with  a  tragic  sort  of  satisfaction. 
They  felt  rich,  luxurious.  He  brushed  his  clothes 
and  changed  his  necktie.  He  wrote  his  name  and 
address  on  an  envelope  and  put  it  in  his  breast 
pocket.  He  would  leave  no  message.  (The  silence 
of  supreme  contempt !  At  such  a  moment,  a  gentle 
man  accused  no  one.)  He  brushed  his  hat  and  put 
it  on  at  a  defiant  angle.  (Debonair  in  the  face  of 
death!  King  Charles  going  to  the  scaffold.)  He 
turned  out  his  gas  jet  with  the  fateful  gesture  of 
immutable  finality.  (Out,  out,  brief  candle!)  He 
descended  the  stairs  to  the  street  of  his  doom,  aristo 
cratically  indifferent  to  the  canaille  who  had  con 
demned  him. 

All  this,  of  course,  was  the  first  effect  of  the  silk 
underwear.  It  had  a  soothing,  flattering  sort  of 
whispered  touch  as  he  walked;  and  there  rose  out 
of  the  depths  of  his  physical  being  a  distracting 
sense  of  consoled  self-sufficiency.  He  was  about  to 
die — yes,  but  of  his  own  choice,  by  his  own  hand, 
at  his  own  convenience.  There  was  no  hurry.  He 
would  not  falter — no  fear  of  that !  He  was  on  Broad 
way,  dressed  like  a  gentleman,  with  money  in  his 
pocket;  no  reason  why  he  should  leave  it  for  some 

[  270  ] 


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attendant  in  the  Morgue  to  spend.  Die  like  a  gen 
tleman  !  He  went  into  a  restaurant. 

Food  is  the  very  devil  for  overcoming  poetic 
melancholy.  What  the  pink-silk  underwear  had 
begun,  a  grilled  chop  and  baked  potato  completed. 
He  sent  the  waiter  for  a  box  of  imported  cigarettes, 
paid  his  bill,  and  sat  back  to  smoke  and  sip  his 
coffee.  He  felt  a  certain  vague  reluctance  to  part 
so  soon  with  the  luxury  of  silk  against  the  skin.  It 
occurred  to  him  that  his  underclothes  would  look 
too  new;  that  it  would  be  evident  he  had  bought 
them  for  the  sad  occasion.  It  would  make  him 
ridiculous.  He  foresaw  a  paragraph  in  the  news 
papers:  "Young  Cope,  before  committing  his  rash 
act,  must  have  invested  his  last  few  dollars  in  a  new 
suit  of  pink-silk  underwear  which  showed  no  signs 
of  wear.  The  police  have  learned  that  he  bought 
them  in  a  Twenty-third  Street  store  only  a  few  hours 
before  he  launched  himself  into  eternity."  Vanity ! 
And  laughter!  Public  laughter!  And  Janet  Nast 
sorry,  pitiful,  but  a  little  red  and  ashamed  of  him. 
No.  He  would  have  to  wear  his  pink  silk  for  a  day  or 
two,  and  have  some  money  in  his  pocket  when  he 
died.  If  he  could  not  earn  it,  he  might  borrow  it 
from  Gadkin  and  leave  a  will  returning  it  to  him. 

So,  at  least,  we  may  reconstruct  Cope's  thoughts 
from  what  he  told  Gadkin  of  the  evening,  years 
afterward.  At  the  time  he  told  nothing.  When 
Gadkin  came  to  the  boarding  house,  after  the  play, 
he  found  Cope  walking  up  and  down  the  threadbare 

[271] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

strip  of  carpet  that  sufficed  to  cover  the  floor  of  his 
narrow  hall  bedroom,  calm,  uncommunicative,  su 
perior,  smoking  expensive  cigarettes.  Gadkin  tried 
to  be  jocular  with  him  about  his  fiasco  as  a  super. 
He  regarded  Gadkin  thoughtfully,  looked  at  his 
cigarette,  flicked  the  ashes  on  the  carpet,  and  con 
tinued  on  his  beat.  Gadkin  could  make  nothing  of 
this  new  man -of -the- world  manner;  he  could  not 
see  the  pink-silk  underwear.  He  asked  Cope  what 
he  intended  to  do.  Cope  replied,  "I'm  going  to  get 
a  position." 

"A  position?    Where?" 

"In  some  office,"  Cope  said.  "I'm  done  with  the 
stage." 

Gadkin  laughed.  "All  right.  I'll  see  how  you 
feel  about  it  in  the  morning.  Good  night." 

But  in  the  morning  Cope  went  out  in  search  of 
his  "position"  before  Gadkin  woke.  He  was  gone 
all  day;  and  when  he  returned  in  the  evening  he  was 
already  an  office  boy.  He  had  found  his  place  in 
the  play  agency — Hart  Corwin's  play  agency — from 
which  he  was  graduated  finally  into  moving  pictures. 

6 

To  Gadkin,  I  repeat,  all  this  was  merely  laugh 
able.  He  did  not  see  that  Cope's  relations  with  his 
mother  had  probably  developed  a  morbid  strain  in 
his  instinct  of  affection,  so  that  he  unconsciously 
expected  and  feared  ridicule  from  any  person  whom 

[272] 


VANCE  COPE 


he  loved;  and  under  the  impulse  of  this  unconscious 
expectation,  he  put  himself  into  ridiculous  situa 
tions  as  a  lover,  and  suffered  under  and  revolted 
against  the  laughter  that  resulted.  As  a  conse 
quence,  the  emotion  of  love  to  Cope  was  inevitably 
the  "bitter  sweet"  of  those  Elizabethan  poets  who 
complain  so  eloquently  of  their  hard-hearted  mis 
tresses.  And  his  fear  of  love  included  a  fascinated 
fear  of  woman. 

Unfortunately  for  Gadkin,  Cope's  instinct  of  af 
fection  ran  to  this  same  morbid  strain  in  his  friend 
ship.  That  was  why  he  told  Gadkin  the  ridiculous 
truth  about  his  affair  with  the  roses,  and  about  the 
preposterous  psychology  of  his  scene  in  "Her  Royal 
Happiness,"  and  the  bathetic  effect  of  pink-silk 
underwear  on  his  suicidal  impulse,  and  all  the  rest 
of  his  absurdities.  And,  of  course,  Gadkin  laughed 
at  him.  And,  equally  of  course,  Cope  unconsciously 
hated  him  for  his  laughter,  just  as  he  hated  his 
mother,  and  the  actress  of  the  roses,  and  Janet  Nast, 
and  everyone  else  whom  he  loved.  It  was  certain 
that  his  friendship  with  Gadkin  would  end  in  a 
quarrel.  Anyone  could  have  predicted  that. 

The  quarrel  came  in  Los  Angeles,  during  the  film 
production  of  "Her  Royal  Happiness."  Gadkin 
was  playing  Prince  Albert  of  Aquitania,  with  Janet 
Nast  as  Princess  Aline.  Cope  had  got  him  the  part. 
Cope,  indeed,  had  engineered  the  purchase  of  the 
play  and  most  of  the  casting  of  it.  He  was  now  a 
sort  of  assistant  director  and  holder  of  the  script  for 

[273] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

Ben  Spenser,  and  they  prepared  the  scenarios  to 
gether  as  they  went  along. 

"He  broke  into  the  film  business  quite  naturally," 
Gadkin  explained  with  malice.  "As  Hart  Corwin's 
office  boy,  he'd  had  the  run  of  the  manuscript  plays 
that  came  in,  and  for  years  he'd  been  lifting  good 
dramatic  ideas  out  of  them,  on  the  side,  and  selling 
them  to  the  film  companies.  Ben  Spenser  sent  for 
him  on  the  strength  of  his  successful  piracies.  As 
soon  as  they  thought  of  doing  'Her  Royal  Happi 
ness,'  Cope  wrote  to  me  and  got  me  to  give  up  a 
good  job  to  come  out  here,  damn  him." 

The  engagement  of  Janet  Nast  for  the  filming  of 
"Her  Royal  Happiness"  was  the  sensation  of  the 
day.  She  was  one  of  the  first  recognized  theatrical 
stars  to  leave  the  stage  for  the  movies.  The  press 
agent's  announcement  of  her  screen  salary  was 
printed  in  the  newspaper  headlines,  and  all  the 
dramatic  critics  viewed  her  defection  with  prophetic 
alarm. 

"I  don't  know  where  they  got  the  money  to  pay 
Mamma  Nast  the  advance  on  the  contract,"  Gadkin 
said.  "They  were  operating  on  a  shoestring.  They 
were  using  an  old  ranch  barn  on  Sunset  Boulevard 
as  a  studio,  and  they  bought  second-hand  sets  out 
of  storage  in  the  East  for  their  scenery,  and  when 
we  went  out  on  location  we  went  in  a  flock  of  molting 
Fords.  It  was  Ben  Spenser's  first  venture  on  his  own. 
He'd  taken  the  camera  man  and  the  studio  carpenter 
into  partnership,  so  as  not  to  have  to  pay  them 

[274] 


VANCE  COPE 


salaries,  and  Cope  wasn't  getting  more  than  enough 
to  meet  his  board  bill.  They  were  all  living  on  hope. 
There's  always  plenty  of  it  in  the  air  in  Los  Angeles. 
There  has  to  be  to  keep  us  movie  actors  alive." 

How  the  quarrel  between  Cope  and  Gadkin  began 
I  do  not  know — and  it  is  not  important — but  I  imag 
ine  that  Gadkin  came  to  Los  Angeles  with  the  con 
tempt  for  the  movie  business  which  it  was  natural 
for  any  actor  from  the  legitimate  stage  to  feel  at 
that  period  of  the  world's  history;  and  probably  his 
contempt  extended  to  the  staff  of  the  studio,  includ 
ing  Cope.  Cope,  in  the  first  flush  of  their  renewal  of 
friendship,  had  told  him  the  truth  about  his  great 
moment  in  the  throne-room  scene  on  the  stage  of 
the  Lyceum,  and  it  was  dangerous  information  for 
Gadkin;  it  did  not  add  to  his  respect  for  Cope. 
Gadkin  saw  himself  as  a  successful  and  experienced 
actor,  and  it  fell  to  Cope  to  break  the  news  to  him 
that  his  stage  method  was  not  subtle  enough  for  the 
camera.  Ben  Spenser  had  been  bawling  at  him: 
' '  Don't  mug  it,  man !  Don't  mug  it ! "  And  Gadkin 
was  not  in  a  mood  to  accept  criticism  meekly  from 
a  theater  usher  who  had  made  a  fool  of  himself  as 
a  super. 

The  final  break  came  when  Cope  tried  to  change 
the  part  of  Prince  Albert  of  Aquitania  by  proposing 
that  the  lodgekeeper's  son  should  be  a  prince  in  dis 
guise  and  that  the  film  should  end  with  the  Princess 
in  his  arms.  This  would  take  the  leading  male  role 
away  from  Gadkin  and  give  it  to  the  other  lover. 

[275] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

It  would  make  Gadkin  a  sort  of  comic  heavy,  out 
witted  and  absurd.  "And  you  can  tell  the  world," 
Gadkin  said,  "he  didn't  do  thai  to  me  without  a 
fight." 

The  fight  grew  and  spread  until  it  involved  about 
everyone  in  the  company.  All  took  sides,  according 
to  their  interests.  Making  a  film  is  a  difficult 
collaboration  that  commonly  includes  an  author, 
a  producer,  a  director,  some  scenario  writers,  a 
number  of  actors,  the  publicity  man,  and  all  their 
friends  and  followers;  they  collaborate  as  the 
Allies  worked  together  on  the  treaty  of  Versailles — 
each  for  himself  and  the  result  for  the  unhappy 
world.  The  author  stands  in  the  place  of  President 
Wilson — when  all  is  over,  he  gets  the  blame.  In  the 
case  of  "Her  Royal  Happiness,"  the  author  was 
mercifully  dead. 

The  Nasts  agreed  with  Cope  in  his  plan  for  re 
writing;  and  Spenser  himself  at  first  accepted  Cope's 
idea,  having  been  persuaded  that  it  was  his  own. 
But  he  was  already  a  little  jealous  of  Cope,  because 
Cope  was  always  suggesting  just  such  horrible  pop 
ular  improvements  as  this — improvements  that 
might  better  have  occurred  to  Spenser  himself — 
and  now,  in  the  excitement  of  a  studio  argument  with 
Gadkin,  Cope  appealed  to  Janet  Nast  for  support 
instead  of  to  Spenser.  That  was  a  mistake,  and 
Gadkin  took  advantage  of  it.  He  got  Spenser  alone 
at  the  first  opportunity  and  told  him  the  story  of 
Cope's  previous  effort  to  change  the  plot  of  "Her 

[276] 


VANCE  COPE 


Royal  Happiness,"  and  his  subsequent  attempt  to 
die  for  Janet  Nast,  and  the  interference  of  his 
pink-silk  underwear. 

And  Spenser  went  off  into  cavernous  roars  of 
laughter.  He  had  noticed,  in  the  intimacy  of  his 
work  with  Cope,  that  no  matter  how  shabbily 
dressed  Cope  might  be,  he  always  wore  "silk 
undies."  Ho-ho!  Spenser  had  heard  of  Mormons 
wearing  sacred  underwear,  but  this!  Ho-ho!  He 
was  so  amused  and  contemptuous  that  he  promptly 
made  two  mistakes  himself;  he  told  the  story  to 
Janet  Nast  and  he  failed  to  tell  it  to  her  mother. 

Mamma  Nast  was  what  is  called  "a  cannibal 
mother"  in  the  studios.  She  lived  remorselessly  on 
the  flesh  of  her  child,  kept  all  Janet's  earnings,  gave 
her  only  pocket  money,  watched  the  men  around 
her  like  a  Spanish  duenna,  and  jealously  banished 
any  companionship  that  threatened  her  sole  control 
of  her  child's  life.  If  Spenser  had  told  his  tale  to 
Mamma  Nast,  Cope  would  have  disappeared  from 
Janet  Nast's  company  like  a  harem  traitor  in 
Stamboul.  Spenser  was  kept  silent,  I  suppose,  by 
the  fact  that  Mamma  Nast  and  he  were  not  on 
joking  terms. 

When  he  told  Janet  Nast,  in  chuckling  confidence, 
she  looked  confused  and  changed  the  subject.  She 
made  no  comment  to  him  and  she  gave  no  sign  to 
Cope.  She  kept  to  herself  whatever  thoughts  she 
had,  said  nothing  to  her  mother,  and  went  through 
the  afternoon's  work  in  the  studio,  deaf  to  Spenser's 

[277] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

sly  references  to  pink-silk  underwear  and  blind  to 
Cope's  air  of  persecuted  depression. 

Cope  had  lost  his  fight.  Spenser  had  decided  that 
the  Prince  of  Aquitania  was  to  marry  the  Princess 
Aline,  and  Gadkin  played  his  scenes  with  more  than 
royal  self-complacency.  But  that  night  Cope  was 
summoned  by  Mamma  Nast  to  her  suite  in  the 
hotel,  and  two  days  later  the  company  heard  that 
the  Nasts  had  bought  out  Spenser  and  his  partners; 
that  they  were  going  to  complete  the  film  according 
to  Cope's  plan;  that  Gadkin  and  all  his  partisans 
were  out  of  power;  and  that  Cope  was  the  produc 
ing  manager  of  the  new  "Janet  Nast  International 
Film  Producing  Corporation." 


All  this,  of  course,  was  ancient  history  before  I 
arrived  in  Los  Angeles.  Already,  to  the  studios, 
"Her  Royal  Happiness"  was  an  old,  early,  museum 
masterpiece.  Thanks  to  Cope's  rewriting,  it  had 
been  an  enduring  popular  success,  one  of  those 
steady  small-town  successes  that  make  fortunes  for 
picture  producers.  None  of  Cope's  later  films  had 
topped  it.  "Samson  and  Delilah"  had  been  a 
Broadway  riot;  so  had  "Antony  and  Cleopatra"; 
and  these  two  productions  had  made  Cope  famous 
abroad — particularly  in  France,  where  the  "fear-of- 
woman"  theme  is  always  soul  satisfying — but  Pu 
ritan  America  had  found  no  psychic  comfort  in 

[278] 


VANCE  COPE 


either  film;  and  "Manon  Lescaut"  was  almost  a 
failure  financially. 

"He's  done,"  Gadkin  exulted.  "He  never  had 
anything,  anyway.  The  public's  tired  of  the  big 
spectacular  and  the  costume  film,  but  that  isn't  the 
real  trouble  with  Cope.  He  put  himself  over  with 
that  stuff,  but  he  had  nothing  behind  it.  He  has 
no  heart,  no  sympathy,  nothing  but  conceit.  He 
tried  to  do  the  real  thing  in  'Her  Fine  Feathers' — 
real  American  heart-throb  drama — and  look  at  it! 
They  tell  me  he  lost  money  on  it.  And  he's  ruined 
Janie  Nast.  He's  had  her  playing  cold-blooded  little 
vamps  until  the  public  hates  her.  If  you  go  into 
pictures  with  Cope,  you'll  never  get  anywhere. 
He's  done,  I  tell  you.  He's  done." 

Gadkin  was  a  human  being  until  he  talked  about 
Cope.  Then  he  became  all  the  furies,  a  woman 
scorned,  and  the  villain  in  a  war  film.  You  had  to 
discount  everything  he  said  by  at  least  90  per  cent. 
Even  so,  I  was  afraid  that  he  was  right  about  Cope's 
being  "done"  when  I  saw  how  things  were  at  the 
studio.  The  spirit  of  Mamma  Nast  pervaded  the 
whole  place,  and  it  was  a  spirit  of  selfish  pettiness 
that  begot  nothing  but  bitterness  and  disloyalty. 
Janet  Nast  was  known  as  "Nasty  Janie"  and  her 
mother's  nickname  was  unreportable.  Cope  was  out 
of  touch  with  his  staff.  They  despised  him  secretly 
because  the  Nasts  appeared  to  dominate  him,  and 
he  refused  to  hear  any  complaints  against  their  rule; 
consequently,  he  gave  the  effect  of  being  unap- 

[279] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

proachable  in  the  midst  of  palace  grievances  that 
sapped  the  loyalty  of  his  aides.  And  he  had  re 
pellent  peculiarities  of  temperament.  I  saw  one  of 
them  during  my  second  week  at  the  studio. 

He  had  come  there,  that  morning,  to  direct  the 
scene  of  a  fancy-dress  ball.  The  company  were  all 
waiting  for  him,  and  they  greeted  him  according  to 
the  privileges  of  their  positions  as  he  moved  around 
among  them,  looking  them  over,  chaffing  them, 
flattering  them,  or  criticizing  them.  Tall,  thin,  in 
dark  clothes,  a  black  stock  tied  twice  around  his 
collar,  one  lock  of  dark  hair  down  on  his  forehead, 
pale,  he  made  an  ascetic,  a  scholarly,  a  poetic 
figure  against  his  background  and  surroundings. 
But  the  contrast  seemed  to  me  too  obviously  de 
signed  and  self-conscious.  He  smiled  too  much  with 
his  lips  and  not  enough  with  his  eyes.  When  he 
listened  seriously,  he  had  an  intense  abstracted  gaze 
that  was  too  affectedly  direct  and  concentrated. 

Cuthbert  Anderson,  his  new  leading  man,  was 
talking  to  me  as  Cope  approached.  They  were  on 
friendly  terms;  they  had  not  quarreled;  but  Ander 
son  whispered  to  me:  "I'm  not  going  to  say  'Good 
morning'  to  him  till  he  says  it  to  me.  Watch  what 
happens." 

As  Cope  came  in  our  direction  Anderson  pre 
tended  to  be  interested  in  the  hang  of  a  peasant's 
sheepskin,  which  he  was  pulling  forward  and  hitch 
ing  around  on  his  shoulders,  unaware  of  Cope's 
approach.  Cope  nodded  to  me — he  had  already 

[280] 


VANCE  COPE 


spoken  to  me  in  his  office — but  lie  went  by  without 
greeting  Anderson.  After  he  had  passed,  Anderson 
looked  at  me  and  winked.  We  continued  our  con 
versation.  In  a  few  minutes  Cope  returned  toward 
us,  but  this  time  Anderson  was  busy  with  the  cross 
gartering  on  his  peasant  ankle.  Cope  passed  again 
without  speaking.  I  asked  Anderson,  "Why  are 
you  doing  it?" 

"I  want  to  make  him  speak  to  me  first." 

"Why?" 

"The  other  day,  when  I  said  'Good  morning,' 
he  pretended  not  to  hear  me.  He  does  it  every  now 
and  then  to  somebody — just  to  humiliate  them.  He 
gets  you  fond  of  him  by  being  as  sweet  as  can  be, 
and  then  he  does  something  like  that — snubs  you. 
He  keeps  these  young  people  in  a  little  hell  of  small 
cruelties,  mixed  with  kindnesses  that  you  can't 
resist." 

Everyone  was  ready  to  go  on  with  the  scene,  but 
Cope  did  not  begin  it.  He  continued  moving  about, 
rearranging  furniture  unnecessarily,  readjusting 
lights,  and  passing  and  repassing  Anderson,  who 
continued  to  miss  every  opportunity  to  greet  him. 
The  whole  thing  was  done  so  clandestinely  that  I 
supposed  no  one  was  aware  of  it  but  ourselves. 
Certainly  nothing  in  Cope's  manner  betrayed  it; 
he  must  have  been  uncertain  whether  Anderson  was 
doing  it  purposely  or  not.  But  after  at  least  half 
an  hour's  delay  Janet  Nast,  in  the  costume  of  a 
Fellah  woman,  came  over  to  us  as  if  casually,  con- 

[281] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

fronted  Anderson,  and  said,  "Will  you  please  say 
'Good  morning'  to  him  and  let  us  get  to  work?" 

He  laughed.    "All  right." 

She  left,  unsmiling. 

"She's  on  to  him,''  he  explained. 

The  next  time  that  Cope  passed  us  Anderson  ad 
dressed  a  cheerful  greeting  to  him.  Cope  answered 
as  if  he  had  not  noticed  Anderson  before,  talked  with 
us  a  moment,  and  then  called  for  the  scene.  I  felt 
sorry  for  him.  With  such  a  childishly  sensitive 
egotism,  how  he  must  suffer!  And  make  others 
suffer!  Janet  Nast,  for  instance.  By  what  disil 
lusioning  experience  had  her  understanding  of  him 
been  acquired? 

She  was  not  at  all  as  I  had  expected  to  find  her. 
I  had  seen  her  on  the  screen  as  a  little  dark  Delilah, 
inscrutable,  faintly  smiling,  treacherous,  with  some 
secret  personality  of  her  own  that  remained  a 
mystery.  And  she  had  repeated  the  same  effect  of 
hidden  mind  and  purpose  in  her  Cleopatra.  An 
Oriental  idol,  honey  brown,  moving  only  her  slow 
eyes,  borne  solemnly  in  procession  or  enthroned  on 
something  like  an  altar,  she  had  given  the  impression 
of  being  inexplicably  adored  and  malevolent,  wooden 
and  cruel.  As  Manon,  the  mystery  became  a  secret 
and  unexplained  discontent:  she  deserted  her  lover 
in  a  sort  of  restless  dissatisfaction  with  existence, 
and  she  returned  to  him  in  the  same  mood;  in  her 
death  scene  in  the  desert,  she  gazed  out  over  the 
sands  as  if  that  desolation  were  the  picture  of  her 

[282] 


VANCE  COPE 


life;  and  she  closed  her  eyes  on  it,  indifferent  to 
her  lover's  agonized  embraces,  equally  bored  by  life 
and  death.  What  was  at  the  heart  of  this  mystery 
in  her? 

Now  that  I  saw  her  in  the  flesh,  she  seemed  to  be 
merely  an  ordinary  young  woman,  with  a  pale  olive 
complexion  and  a  light  and  commonplace  voice, 
earning  her  living  by  allowing  Cope  to  direct  her 
to  his  own  ends  in  scenes  which  she  did  not  appear 
to  take  the  trouble  to  understand.  He  dictated 
every  gesture,  every  change  of  expression  for  her, 
planning  his  effects  without  consulting  her,  and 
studying  them,  without  her,  in  the  "daily  rushes" 
that  were  shown  him  in  the  projection  room.  He 
seemed  to  be  using  her  as  a  flexible  and  expressive 
marionette.  The  deepening  lines  of  discontent  in 
her  face  must  have  dictated  the  type  of  character 
that  could  be  imputed  to  her  in  his  pictures,  but 
that  dissatisfaction  seemed  to  me  no  more  than  the 
expression  of  her  own  vacuity. 

I  was  supposed  to  be  learning  how  scenarios  are 
written  and  acquiring  what  the  studio  called  "the 
picture  point  of  view."  To  that  end,  I  was  loafing 
around  the  lot,  watching  the  rehearsals  and  the 
work  before  the  camera,  observing  the  daily  rushes 
in  the  projection  room,  sitting  in  editorial  conference 
among  the  scenario  writers,  and  helping  to  edit  the 
titles.  And  I  had  been  invited  to  take  sides  in  an 
unexpected  dispute. 

The  picture  on  which  they  were  working  was  a 

19  [  283  ] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

film  version  of  Daudet's  Sappho,  which  Cope  had 
tentatively  called  "Even  as  You  and  I."  He  had 
first  planned  to  end  the  story  as  Daudet  ended  it, 
with  Sappho  returning  to  her  convict  lover  and  Jean 
deserted  at  the  quay  in  Marseilles.  But  after  doing 
the  scenes  between  Jean  and  his  young  fiancee, 
Irene  (played  by  Mary  Merivale),  Cope  had  pro 
posed  to  end  the  film  with  Jean  married  to  Irene 
and  living  happily  ever  after.  His  scenario  staff 
accepted  this  cheerful  alteration  enthusiastically, 
but  Mamma  Nast  objected,  for  obvious  reasons. 
She  and  Cope  and  Janet  had  a  long  private  wrangle, 
and  the  issue  of  it  was  still  in  doubt.  Meanwhile, 
Cope  had  begun  to  photograph  the  opening  scene  in 
the  novel — the  fancy-dress  ball  in  Dechelette's 
studio,  at  which  Jean  and  Sappho  first  met.  And 
I  was  puzzled. 

I  was  puzzled  to  know  why  Cope  should  have  pro 
posed  to  desert  his  favorite  "fear-of -woman"  theme 
in  "Sappho"  and  end  it  with  Sappho's  victim  con 
soled  in  the  arms  of  a  young  wife.  The  editorial 
staff  could  give  me  no  light.  They  saw  simply  that 
the  new  ending  would  be  popular  with  everybody 
except  the  Nasts;  and  they  wanted  a  popular  ending 
and  they  longed  to  see  the  Nasts  humiliated.  Cuth- 
bert  Anderson,  the  young  leading  man,  was  aware 
of  nothing  but  his  own  personal  conflict  with  Cope's 
peculiarities;  I  doubt  whether  he  knew  what  the  film 
was  about.  I  did  not  see  that  Janet  Nast  was  much 
more  intelligent.  I  could  hardly  ask  her  mother. 

[284] 


VANCE  COPE 


Mamma  Nast,  as  the  fancy-dress  ball  began,  re 
treated  to  her  canvas  chair  beside  Janet's  stage 
dressing  table,  where  she  sat,  silently  critical,  watch 
ing  the  world.  She  never  interfered  with  Cope's 
direction.  She  had  a  part  in  all  the  financial  doings 
of  the  corporation,  of  course;  and  she  was  always 
quarreling  with  the  publicity  staff;  and  she  had  to 
pass  upon  the  scenarios  and  the  continuities  before 
they  were  accepted  for  her  daughter;  but  as  soon  as 
a  scene  was  begun  she  withdrew  behind  her  daugh 
ter's  throne  and  let  the  puppet  move  through  the 
gestures  that  had  been  agreed  upon. 

At  a  little  distance  from  Mamma  Nast  and 
farther  in  the  background,  Mary  Merivale  was 
sitting  on  a  bench  against  the  wall.  She  was  not 
taking  part  in  the  ballroom  scene;  as  Irene  Bouche- 
reau  she  did  not  enter  the  story  until  years  later. 
She  was  in  her  street  clothes,  but  without  her  hat, 
and  her  small  brother — a  child  of  five  or  six — was 
leaning  against  her  knee.  She  was  not  more  than 
eighteen  years  old,  herself,  but  she  made  an  ideal 
picture  of  young  maternity,  posing  with  her  arm 
around  the  boy,  placidly  watching  the  busy  scene 
at  which  he  stared  so  round -eyed.  Then  Cope,  in 
passing,  stopped  a  moment  to  speak  to  her,  and 
she  stood  up,  her  hand  on  the  boy's  shoulder,  smil 
ing  at  Cope.  It  was  an  extraordinary  smile,  with 
out  a  tremor  of  self-consciousness,  trusting  and 
grateful,  meek  to  the  point  of  adoration,  and 
flushed  with  unembarrassed  pleasure.  It  gave 

I  285  1 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

me  a  sudden  suspicion  of  the  truth,  and  I  looked 
away  to  see  whether  anyone  else  had  noticed  it. 
Mamma  Nast  had;  and  its  reflection  seemed  to 
glint  illuminatingly  in  the  hard  eye  with  which 
she  regarded  it. 

I  felt  sorry  for  Mary  Merivale.  I  confess  it 
proudly.  I  was  probably  the  last  person  in  America 
to  have  the  privilege  of  pitying  that  triumphant 
young  woman.  I  went  over  to  her  bench  and  sat 
beside  her,  out  of  some  vague  desire  to  shield  her 
from  Mamma  Nast. 

She  greeted  me  with  no  such  smile  as  she  had 
given  Cope.  She  seemed  shy.  She  kept  her  eyes  on 
the  child  and  spoke  in  a  low,  composed  voice  that 
was  hardly  audible.  It  was  like  the  abashed  voice 
of  a  country  girl  on  her  first  visit  to  city  relatives. 
And  she  was  a  country  girl — -almost.  She  had  come 
from  the  little  town  of  Findellen,  in  New  Jersey. 
I  knew  Findellen. 

Really? 

I  knew  it  as  a  name  on  a  station  signboard.  I 
had  never  been  on  a  train  that  stopped  there. 

We  were  a  long  way  from  home. 

She  admitted  it  without  any  wistful  regret. 
There  had  been  nothing  to  keep  her  in  Findellen. 
She  was  an  orphan,  and  little  Billy  was  dependent 
on  her.  As  long  as  he  was  a  baby  she  could  support 
him.  But  how  was  she  to  educate  him  in  Findellen 
as  he  grew  up? 

She  was  naturally  reluctant  to  talk  about  herself, 

[286] 


VANCE  COPE 


but  she  was  delighted  to  talk  about  Billy.  He  was 
her  pride,  her  motive  power,  her  excuse  for  being. 
She  had  worked  for  him,  as  a  waitress  in  the  only 
hotel  in  Findellen;  and  it  was  to  amuse  him  that 
she  had  gone  wearily  at  night  to  the  moving- 
picture  theater  that  offered  Findellen  its  only 
public  entertainment.  There  she  had  seen  him 
on  the  screen — or  a  boy  who  was  not  half  so 
sweet  and  cute  and  knowing  as  he — and  she  had 
begun  to  save  for  the  purpose  of  bringing  him  to 
Los  Angeles  some  day.  She  had  intended  to  work 
as  a  waitress  and  to  send  him  to  school  on  the 
money  that  he  might  earn  in  the  studios  during 
the  summer  holidays. 

You  should  have  heard  her  account  of  her  trip 
across  the  continent.  She  started  from  Findellen 
with  everything  she  owned  in  two  straw  suitcases 
and  a  number  of  paper  boxes  tied  with  string, 
ignorant,  trusting,  unprepared  for  any  difficulty. 
And  the  traveling  world  helped  her  as  if  she  and 
Billy  were  two  infants  consigned  in  the  conductor's 
care,  with  shipping  tags  in  their  buttonholes.  They 
journeyed  in  day  coaches.  She  lived  on  the  charity 
of  her  fellow  passengers  because  she  had  only  enough 
money  left  to  buy  Billy  milk  and  biscuits  after  she 
had  paid  for  their  railroad  tickets.  Some  one  gave 
her  money;  unknown  to  her,  it  was  tucked  into  the 
pocket  of  her  jacket  as  it  lay  on  the  seat.  A  train 
man  refused  to  let  her  pay  for  Billy's  food,  which  he 
ordered  from  the  dining  car.  A  woman  took  Billy 

[287] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

into  her  Pullman  berth  at  night  so  that  he  might 
have  a  comfortable  bed. 

When  she  arrived  in  Los  Angeles  she  had  not  even 
street-car  fare.  She  said  good-by  to  her  railroad 
friends,  left  her  baggage  in  the  station,  and  set  out 
to  walk  to  the  nearest  studio  with  Billy.  The  near 
est  studio  was  Cope's.  And  she  walked  through  the 
casting  director's  office  to  Cope,  and  through  Cope 
to  a  small  lead  in  Sappho,  without  any  idea  of  what 
a  miracle  her  progress  was.  In  spite  of  all  the  im 
peding  press  and  struggle  of  competitive  ambitions 
around  her,  she  had  continued  to  move  forward 
blindly,  in  the  sublime  soft-voiced  confidence  of 
complete  ignorance.  As  a  picture  actress  she  was  a 
director's  dream.  When  she  played  a  scene,  she 
seemed  to  hear  and  see  nothing  but  Cope,  alone 
with  him,  unaware  even  of  the  camera,  express 
ing  instantly  any  emotion  that  he  asked  for,  with 
absorbed  naturalness.  And  she  did  not  think  of 
herself  as  an  actress  at  all.  She  was  only  in  the 
studio  to  find  an  opening  for  Billy.  Was  I  writing 
a  story  for  Mr.  Cope?  Would  I  put  a  part  for 
Billy  in  it? 

Naturally,  I  replied  that  I  should  like  to  put  a 
part  for  her  in  it,  too.  She  rather  frowned  over  that, 
until  I  explained  that  Billy  would  probably  act 
better  with  her  than  with  anyone  else.  "Yes,"  she 
agreed,  much  pleased.  "I  think  he  would." 

If  we  put  them  in  as  mother  and  child,  would  she 
be  able  to  act  the  mother? 

[288] 


VANCE  COPE 


"I  ought  to  be  able  to,"  she  said.  "I'm  the  only 
mother  he's  ever  had." 

What  had  become  of  his  mother? 

His  mother  had  deserted  him.  She  had  deserted 
them  both,  but  Mary  spoke  of  her  always  as 
"Billy's  mother,"  not  her  own,  until  I  supposed 
she  was  speaking  of  her  stepmother,  and  she 
corrected  me. 

I  forget,  now,  how  the  details  of  the  story  came 
out.  I  was  so  excited  by  discovering  the  resemblance 
between  her  history  and  Cope's  that  my  recollection 
of  the  conversation  is  confused.  Her  mother  had 
been  a  show  girl  who  retired  from  Broadway  to  a 
bungalow  in  Findellen  when  she  married  a  New  York 
commuter.  There  had  been  several  quarrels  and 
separations  between  them  before  Billy  was  born. 
Then  the  father  was  killed  in  a  street  accident  and 
the  mother  went  back  "on  the  road."  She  ceased 
sending  them  money.  They  had  not  heard  from 
her  for  years. 

"Did  you  tell  this  to  Cope?"  I  asked. 

"Why?" 

I  was  just  wondering. 

"Yes,"  she  said.  "I  told  him  when  I  asked  him 
for  a  part  for  Billy.  I  told  him  I  was  sure  that  Billy 
would  be  able  to  act,  because  his  mother  was  an 
actress.  And  he  asked  me  about  her,  and  I  told 
him." 

"What  did  he  say?" 

She  looked  at  me,  puzzled.    "Nothing." 

[289] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

"Didn't  he  say  that  Billy  was  lucky  to  have 
you?" 

That  startled  her.  "Yes,"  she  said.  "How  did 
you  know?" 

8 

I  went  to  luncheon  with  some  members  of  the 
scenario  department,  but  I  was  so  full  of  my  dis 
covery  that  I  wanted  to  talk  rather  than  eat.  I  had 
a  theory  not  only  about  Cope  and  Mary  Merivale 
and  Janet  Nast,  but  about  the  movies ;  and  I  wanted 
to  air  it.  It  was  a  theory  involving  the  subconscious 
mind,  our  dream  mind  that  makes  dream  pictures 
for  itself  while  our  conscious  intelligence  is  asleep, 
just  as  the  moving-picture  screen  makes  day-dream 
pictures  for  us,  waking,  in  the  theater.  I  wanted 
to  point  out  that  this  subconscious  mind  thought  in 
symbols,  and  that,  whether  we  were  awake  or  sleep 
ing,  we  responded  to  those  symbols  with  automatic 
and  ungovernable  emotions.  I  wanted  to  argue 
that  Janet  Nast  had  become  a  repellent  symbol  to 
the  American  public  because  she  had  been  cast  as 
a  "vampire"  so  often  that  she  was  a  symbol  of  fear 
— of  sex  fear.  But  I  started  by  pointing  out  that 
the  movie  vamp  had  lost  her  popularity;  that  the 
most  popular  American  actress  on  the  stage  or  the 
screen  was  always  the  one  who  made  the  least 
sexual  appeal.  And  before  I  could  get  any  farther 
we  were  lost  in  a  squabble  about  Puritanism  and 
censorship. 

[290] 


VANCE  COPE 


I  succeeded  only  in  saying  that  Mary  Merivale 
was  worth  ten  Janet  Nasts  to  a  picture  producer 
because  she  had  the  face  of  a  young  Madonna  and 
because  the  mother  symbol  is  all  powerful  in  the 
American  mind.  "If  you're  going  to  make  money 
in  this  studio,"  I  predicted,  foolishly,  "you'll  have 
to  drop  Janet  and  the  vamps  and  get  busy  with 
Mary  and  a  little  mother  love." 

Anyone  who  talks  that  way  in  a  moving-picture 
studio  is  a  simple  soul.  Janet  Nast  met  us  coming 
out  of  the  projection  room,  in  the  afternoon,  and 
asked  me  to  have  dinner  with  her  mother  and  her, 
that  evening.  And  I  suspected  that  some  one  had 
reported  our  conversation  to  her. 

I  could  only  congratulate  myself  that  my  theory 
about  Cope  and  her  and  Mary  Merivale  had  not 
got  into  the  argument.  It  was  this: 

Janet  was  as  full  of  unconscious  and  repressed 
hatred  of  her  mother  as  Cope  of  his.  Any  child  to 
whom  a  mother  is  cruel  has  that  hatred,  and  Mamma 
Nast  had  been  cannibal  cruel  to  Janet.  Who  else 
had  so  suppressed  her  and  used  her  and  dominated 
her  and  prevented  her  from  getting  a  life  of  her  own 
and  love  and  children?  Here  was  the  secret  of  her 
dissatisfaction  and  her  expression  of  inexplicable 
discontent.  When  she  heard  that  Cope  had  once 
tried  to  kill  himself  for  love  of  her,  she  must  have 
seen  in  him  a  possibility  of  happiness  and  escape. 
But,  unfortunately,  she  appeared  to  Cope  with  her 
mother  beside  her,  and  Cope  must  have  responded 

[291] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

to  them  both  with  the  mingled  fear  and  aversion 
that  he  had  felt  for  his  own  mother.  He  must  have 
seen  Mamma  Nast  as  Janet  grown  old.  And  in  his 
fear  of  Janet  he  had  cast  her  always  as  the  symbol 
of  his  fear  of  woman,  in  "Samson  and  Delilah"  and 
"Antony  and  Cleopatra"  and  all  the  rest. 

With  Mary  Merivale  it  was  quite  another  matter. 
She  came  to  him,  leading  by  the  hand  a  boy  who 
might  have  been  himself.  She  was  the  symbol  of 
everything  that  his  mother  should  have  been;  and 
at  the  same  time  he  could  project  on  her  and  Billy 
the  self-pity  that  was  at  the  base  of  his  sensitive 
egotism.  No  wonder  he  wanted  to  change  the  end 
of  "Sappho"  so  that  he — in  the  person  of  Jean — 
might  find  an  imagined  happiness  in  her  arms. 

You  think  that  this  is  fanciful?  Well,  at  least  it  has 
the  merit  of  explaining  what  now  began  to  happen. 

The  dinner  with  the  Nasts  was  to  be  an  informal 
family  affair  at  seven,  and  they  assured  me  that  I 
did  not  need  to  dress.  "Don't  you  believe  it," 
Gadkin  warned  me  at  the  hotel.  "Mamma  Nast 
used  to  be  a  wardrobe  woman  and  she  always  dines 
in  state." 

He  had  further  information  to  offer.  The  Nasts 
had  a  toy  manor  house  in  the  Beverly  Hills  district, 
where  Janet  lived  isolated  with  her  mother  and  a 
retinue  of  servants,  as  detached  from  the  business 
of  housekeeping  as  if  she  were  the  one  guest  in  a 
summer  hotel.  She  was  driven  to  the  studio  with 
her  mother,  every  morning,  in  a  limousine  up- 

[  292  ] 


VANCE  COPE 


bolstered  in  plum  purple  to  match  the  chauffeur's 
livery  and  the  lap  robes;  and  the  machine  started 
and  stopped  on  her  mother's  orders,  transporting 
Janet  like  a  passenger  in  a  Pullman  car  over  a  road 
that  she  had  seen  too  often.  She  ate  under  her 
mother's  eye;  she  slept  in  a  room  off  her  mother's; 
she  came  occasionally  to  a  Hollywood  dance  with 
her  mother,  sat  beside  her,  danced  before  her,  and 
departed  at  her  word  and  under  her  wing.  Like 
many  of  the  successful  moving-picture  stars,  she  did 
not  belong  to  any  fast  set  in  Hollywood.  She  had 
no  dissipations.  She  had  no  life  of  her  own  at  all, 
so  far  as  Gadkin  had  been  able  to  see.  She  read  the 
motion-picture  magazines  and  talked  the  gossip  of 
the  motion-picture  studios.  She  did  not  read  the 
newspapers;  she  let  her  mother's  breakfast-table 
comment  tell  her  what  was  in  them.  She  did  not 
seem  to  Gadkin  to  be  repressed,  but  empty.  If  she 
spoke  to  few  in  the  studio,  they  might  think  it 
was  because  she  was  proud,  but  he  was  sure  it  was 
because  she  had  nothing  to  say.  "You'll  enjoy 
your  dinner,"  he  ended.  "It  '11  be  more  fun  than  a 
funeral." 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  it  was  a  highly  edible  dinner, 
well  cooked  and  well  served,  with  flowers  and  shaded 
candles  and  assorted  glasses  and  large  complexities 
of  cutlery  and  all  the  other  stage  properties  of  care 
ful  elegance  as  you  see  it  depicted  in  the  films — 
including  two  of  the  prettiest  dining-room  maids  in 
Los  Angeles,  where  every  waitress  seems  to  have 

[293] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

arrived  with  the  ambition  and  the  physical  cre 
dentials  of  a  movie  actress.  Gadkin  was  right 
about  one  thing:  the  dinner  frocks  were  thorough 
bred.  Mrs.  Nast  looked  the  white-haired,  high- 
nosed  aristocrat,  and  Janet  was  everything  you 
could  ask  of  birth  and  beauty.  The  maids  waited 
on  her  with  a  respectful  air  of  envious  adoration. 
She  accepted  then1  offers  of  food  as  she  accepted  my 
offers  of  conversation,  absent-mindedly,  listening 
to  her  mother,  whom  she  appeared  intent  on  draw 
ing  out  for  me  and  exhibiting  at  her  best. 

In  response  to  this  insistent  attention,  Mamma 
Nast  took  her  seat  at  the  head  of  the  conversation 
and  proved  her  right  to  it.  She  talked  like  a  keen 
old  wine-drinking  dowager,  and  before  the  dinner 
was  over  I  had  nothing  but  respect  for  her.  She 
knew  that  a  war  had  broken  out  in  Europe,  and  she 
was  the  first  person  I  had  met  in  Hollywood  who 
seemed  to  have  heard  of  it.  She  was  interested  in 
national  politics.  She  was  eager  to  hear  all  the 
latest  theatrical  gossip  from  Broadway.  But 
whether  you  discussed  the  war,  politics,  or  the 
stage,  it  was  useless  to  talk  to  her  in  terms  of  what 
you  had  read  in  the  newspapers.  She  had  the  hard- 
boiled  manner  of  taking  it  for  granted  that  news 
paper  men  wrote  only  for  public  consumption,  and 
she  wanted  to  know  the  inside  story  that  lay  behind 
the  newspaper's  presentable  facts.  If  you  had  no 
inside  story  to  give,  she  moved  on  in  search  of  a 
topic  that  you  knew  something  about. 

[294] 


VANCE  COPE 


When  the  coffee  was  served  she  rose  briskly. 
"I  don't  drink  it,"  she  said.  "It  spoils  my  after- 
dinner  nap.  Excuse  me.  I  need  a  few  minutes' 
sleep.  I'll  be  down  again  before  you  leave." 

Janet  watched  her  go.  "We'll  take  our  coffee 
in  the  garden,"  she  told  the  maid.  "And  bring  the 
cigarettes."  She  looked  at  me  for  almost  the  first 
time  and  smiled  in  her  own  right. 

One  side  of  the  dining  room  opened  through  glass 
doors  upon  a  tile-paved  veranda  with  a  Moorish 
awning.  Steps  went  down  to  the  lawn;  and  across 
the  grass,  among  the  flower  beds,  there  was  a  sort 
of  glorified  summerhouse  like  a  small  Greek  temple, 
where  a  flying  Mercury  stood  on  tiptoe  over  a  pool 
of  water  plants.  Janet  led  us  in  procession  to  this 
pillared  arbor,  the  maids  following  with  cushions 
for  the  stone  exedra  seats  and  a  wicker  serving 
table  for  the  coffee.  "Don't  turn  on  the  light," 
Janet  said.  And  she  explained  to  me:  "My  eyes 
are  so  tired  from  the  Kliegs." 

The  inevitable  movie  moon  was  shining,  and  I 
could  see  all  the  flowers  of  all  the  four  seasons  bloom 
ing  together  around  us,  in  the  mad  liberated  way 
that  flowers  have  in  southern  California.  I  thought 
of  remarking  that  the  climate  seemed  to  have  a 
similar  effect  of  emancipation  upon  the  Easterners 
who  came  to  Los  Angeles;  but,  on  second  thoughts, 
it  sounded  rather  too  sociological  as  a  beginning  for 
conversation  under  the  circumstances.  In  that  dim 
diffusion  of  reflected  moonshine,  Janet  looked  like 

[295] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

the  patron  saint  of  all  young  romantic  poets.  I  did 
not  know  what  to  say  to  her.  She  poured  coffee, 
and  passed  a  cup  to  me,  and  settled  back  against 
the  cushions  and  the  curved  stone  seat.  I  struck 
a  match  less  to  light  a  cigarette  than  to  occupy  a 
pause  of  awkward  hesitation.  She  waited,  her  eyes 
on  the  flame.  As  soon  as  I  blew  it  out  she  asked, 
breathlessly,  "Is  he  in  love  with  that  girl?" 

9 

For  a  moment  I  had  not  the  vaguest  notion  what 
she  was  talking  about,  but  I  understood  as  soon  as 
I  had  asked,  "Who?" 

Cope,  of  course!  She  said  his  name  in  a  flatted 
tone.  I  did  not  need  to  have  her  identify  "that 
girl"  as  Mary  Merivale. 

It  struck  me  that  she  was  being  rather  offensively 
frank  in  asking  a  stranger  such  a  question,  and  I 
decided  resentfully  to  reply  with  a  frankness  equally 
offensive.  I  said:  "Yes,  but  I  don't  believe  he 
knows  it." 

She  drew  her  scarf  up  on  her  shoulders  as  if  she 
felt  suddenly  cold,  and,  wrapping  it  around  her,  she 
sat  in  silence,  staring  out  at  the  moonlight.  I  waited 
for  her.  It  was  her  conversation.  I  had  not  begun 
it. 

She  asked,  at  last,  "How  do  you  know  it?" 

How  did  I  know  it?  I  coughed  over  the  cigarette. 
"Well,"  I  said,  "it's  inevitable.  It's  subconscious. 

[296] 


VANCE  COPE 


She  happens  to  be  the  irresistible  starting-signal  to 
his  instinct  of  affection." 

She  turned  her  head  to  see  me.    "  What  ?  " 

That  was  all  right.  She  asked  it  as  if  she  sus 
pected  I  was  crazy.  I  thought  to  myself:  "Well, 
let's  see  if  I  am.  Let's  see  whether  this  theory  will 
stand  trial.  If  there's  anything  in  it,  she'll  find 
some  way  to  put  it  to  the  test.  Let  her  have  it." 
So  I  drew  my  lungs  full  of  smoke,  and  I  began. 

I  told  her  what  I  knew  of  Cope's  youth  and  his 
relations  with  his  mother.  She  asked,  "  How  do  you 
know  this?"  and  I  replied,  "You'll  have  to  take  my 
word  for  it." 

I  told  her  what  I  had  learned  of  Mary  Merivale, 
and  pointed  out  the  parallel  between  Mary's  child 
hood  and  Cope's.  I  dissected  Cope's  instinct  of 
affection  and  I  showed  her  how  morbidly  it  worked. 
She  said,  "That's  all  absurd." 

I  recounted  his  affair  with  the  actress  of  the  roses 
and  compared  it  with  his  behavior  with  herself,  in 
the  throne-room  scene  on  the  stage  of  the  Lyceum. 
She  let  her  scarf  slip  from  her  shoulders  and  leaned 
forward  listening. 

I  traced  the  origin  of  his  subconscious  fear  of 
women,  showed  how  it  began  with  his  mother, 
developed  it  through  both  the  stage  incidents,  and 
exposed  it  full  grown  in  the  theme  of  his  moving 
pictures.  I  identified  her  to  herself  as  a  symbol  for 
this  sex  fear  in  him  and  showed  her  how  she  acted 
on  him  as  a  surrogate  for  her  mother  and  his.  She 

[297] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

put  her  clenched  fist  to  her  lips  and  said  in  a  low 
tone  something  that  sounded  like,  "Damn  her!" 

I  explained  how  Mary  Merivale  escaped  suspicion 
by  being  the  guardian  angel  of  little  Billy,  in  whom 
Cope  unconsciously  saw  his  childhood  self.  "And 
that,"  I  said,  "is  why,  for  the  first  time,  he  wants 
to  abandon  his  fear-of-woman  theme  and  end  his 
picture  in  a  happy  marriage.  If  he  doesn't  marry 
her,  I  don't  know  what  '11  stop  him.  Not  ridicule. 
As  a  man  of  thirty-five,  it  '11  be  ridiculous  for  him 
to  marry  a  child  of  eighteen,  but  unconsciously  he 
seeks  to  be  ridiculous  in  love.  It  seems  to  me  that 
the  whole  thing  is  inevitable.  She's  in  love  with 
him.  The  first  attempt  to  interfere  between  them 
will  merely  precipitate  the  end.  It  '11  bring  to  the 
surface  all  this  unconscious  emotion  that  he's  un 
aware  of  now.  He'll  realize  that  he  wants  to  marry 
her  in  fact,  instead  of  imaginatively  in  the  plot  of 
a  picture." 

It  convinced  her,  apparently.  Certainly  it  gave 
her  thought.  She  hunched  forward,  her  elbows  on 
her  knees,  her  face  in  her  hands,  looking  down  at 
her  feet.  After  a  long  silence,  she  asked,  hoarsely: 
"How  about  me?  What's  the  matter  with  me?" 

I  suppose  the  moonlight  had  affected  me.  I 
could  not  have  felt  more  impersonal  if  we  had  been 
a  pair  of  disembodied  spirits,  sitting  in  pale  spiritual 
glory,  looking  back  at  the  world  that  we  had  left 
hanging  moonlike  over  us. 

"I  don't  know  you,"  I  said.     "I  only  see  that 

[298] 


VANCE  COPE 


you're  unhappy  and  dissatisfied.  You're  full  of 
suppressed  hatred  and  revolt  against  your  mother — 
and  it  can't  come  out  against  her,  because  you  love 
her,  so  it  comes  out  against  everyone  else  and  makes 
you  disliked." 

"They  call  me  'Nasty  Janie,'"  she  said,  chok 
ingly,  "behind  my  back." 

"Yes.  That's  inevitable,  too.  If  you  could 
realize  that  you've  a  perfect  right  to  hate  your 
mother,  so  long  as  you  don't  make  her  unhappy  by 
showing  it;  if  you  could  let  it  into  your  mind,  so 
long  as  you  kept  it  out  of  your  conduct — that  would 
help  you.  It  would  make  you  more  pleasant  with 
everybody  else.  And  it  'd  change  your  expression. 
Your  dissatisfaction  with  life  is  showing  on  the 
films.  It's  in  your  face.  It's  going  to  spoil  your 
whole  career." 

She  brought  me  back  from  impersonality  with  a 
cry  of  scorn.  "Career!"  She  threw  her  hands  out 
at  nothing.  "It's  empty!  That's  what  it  is — 
empty!  I  haven't  anything — any  life.  Look  at  it! 
What  is  it?"  Tears  strangled  her.  She  began  to 
beat  on  her  knee  with  her  fist.  "I  can't!  I  can't 
goon!  I  won't!  If  he  marries  her — I'll  kill  myself . 
I'll  kill  myself!  It  'd  serve  her  right."  She  meant 
her  mother.  "She's — she's  done  it.  She's  pre 
vented  me.  She's  kept  everybody  away  from  me." 
And  she  broke  down,  sobbing. 

There  was  nothing  to  do  but  let  her  cry  it  out. 
I  went  on  talking.  "Your  mother's  done  what 
20  [  299  ] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

everybody  does.  She's  tried  to  keep  you  altogether 
for  herself,  the  way  we  all  do  with  anyone  we  love. 
She's  pathetic.  For  all  her  cleverness,  she's  a 
pathetic  old  woman.  She  sees  that  you're  unhappy 
and  she  doesn't  know  why.  If  she  understood  it, 
she'd  do  anything  you  wanted.  You  don't  need  to 
worry  about  her.  She'll  be  all  right.  She  has  a 
mind.  And  it's  a  mind  that  you  need — a  business 
mind — to  protect  you  from  the  people  who  would 
take  advantage  of  you  if  she  weren't  watching. 
Let  her  manage  the  business  part  of  your  life,  and 
you  look  after  the  rest  of  it  yourself." 

"There  isn't  any,"  she  sobbed. 

"Then  make  some." 

"How?" 

"Find  some  one  you  can  love,  and  marry  him." 

"I  don't  want  to  marry  anyone  but  him" 

"Cope?" 

She  nodded  tearfully. 

"Well  then,  marry  him." 

"How?" 

"I  don't  know,"  I  said.  "That  '11  take  some 
thinking.  You'll  have  to  do  consciously  what  Mary 
Merivale  has  done  without  knowing  it.  You'll  have 
to  resymbolize  yourself,  make  yourself  a  symbol  of 
pity  and  affection  to  him  instead  of  a  symbol  of  sex 
fear.  It  may  not  be  possible,  but  it's  worth  trying." 

At  any  rate,  it  stopped  her  weeping.  She  sat  up, 
dabbing  at  her  eyes  with  her  handkerchief.  And 
very  foolishly,  I  began  to  suggest  a  plan  of  campaign. 

[300] 


VANCE  COPE 


First,  she  ought  to  go  to  Cope  and  withdraw  her 
opposition  to  his  happy  ending  of  the  "Sappho" 
film.  She  should  try  to  do  that  in  such  a  way  as  to 
take  his  side  tacitly  against  her  mother.  And  she 
might  propose  that  as  Sappho  she  should  realize 
where  Jean's  happiness  lay  and  sacrifice  herself  in 
order  to  send  him  to  his  bride.  That  would  give 
her  a  conspicuous  part  in  the  happy  ending,  and  it 
would  help  to  resymbolize  her  not  only  with  Cope, 
but  with  the  public.  "The  important  thing,"  I 
said,  "is  to  contrive  to  do  all  this  in  opposition  to 
your  mother,  so  that  Cope  will  feel  that  you're 
taking  his  part  against  her" 

Then  she  ought  to  take  advantage  of  the  fact 
that,  like  Cope  himself,  she  was  the  child  of  a  cruel 
parent.  "Let  him  project  his  self-pity  on  you, 
instead  of  on  Mary  Merivale.  You  ought  to  be 
able  to  work  that  out  in  the  fight  about  the  happy 
ending.  Tell  him  you  hate  your  mother,  if  you  want 
to.  Appeal  to  him  in  any  way  you  please.  Ask 
him  to  protect  you  against  her.  You  can  make  up 
with  her  later." 

And  she  should  mark  herself,  at  once,  as  the 
friend  and  protector  of  Mary  Merivale  and  little 
Billy.  "They're  probably  living  in  some  cheap 
boarding  house.  Get  them  out  of  it.  Bring  them 
here  if  you  can,  to  live  with  you.  Don't  let  her  dress 
in  that  little  coop  in  the  studio.  Take  her  into  your 
dressing-room  bungalow.  And  mother  Billy,  Let 
Cope  see  you.  Have  Billy  with  you  whenever  Cope 

[301] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

is  around.  But  be  careful.  You'll  have  to  win  Mary 
first,  or  you'll  have  her  jealous  of  you  and  the  boy." 

"It's — it's  hypocritical,"  she  said. 

"Not  at  all.  It  can't  be  done  hypocritically. 
The  boy  particularly.  You  can't  deceive  a  child. 
He'll  see  through  you  at  once  if  you  only  pretend 
affection  and  good  will  for  him.  So  will  Mary. 
She's  no  fool.  People  sense  good  will  and  affection 
even  when  it's  hidden  under  a  forbidding  manner. 
You  know  that.  In  the  same  way,  they  sense  the 
opposite  of  good  will  even  when  you  disguise  it. 
It's  only  the  public  that  can  be  deceived  by  appear 
ances.  The  people  you  live  with  know  you  better 
than  you  think.  If  you  love  Cope,  he  knows  it. 
He's  afraid  of  you  and  you'll  have  to  win  him  by 
making  Mary  Merivale  and  Billy  and  all  these 
other  people  love  you." 

"I  don't  dislike  them,"  she  defended  herself. 

"All  right,  then.  Let  them  see  it  and  make  them 
fond  of  you.  Hate  your  mother  and  love  everybody 
else." 

She  said,  in  a  new  tone:  "I  don't  really  hate  her. 
She  didn't  know  what  she  was  doing.  She  didn't 
see — any  more  than  I  did." 

"Good.  If  you've  come  as  far  as  that,  the  rest 
should  be  easy." 

She  thought  a  moment.  Then  she  added:  "I 
don't  dislike  you — even  after  what  you've  said  about 
me — here  and  at  the  studio." 

"You  mean  at  luncheon?" 

[302] 


VANCE  COPE 


She  said,  forgivingly,  "Yes." 

I  laughed.  "It  doesn't  make  any  difference  to 
me.  I'm  only  telling  you  the  truth.  I  like,  im 
mensely,  the  way  you've  taken  it." 

"Then  you'll  help  me?" 

"Certainly.    All  I  can." 

"You  can  help  me  a  great  deal.  You  can  come 
with  me  now  and  see  Vance — Mr.  Cope — with  me." 

"What  about?" 

"About  changing  the  ending  of  the  film." 

"I  will,"  I  said,  "in  a  hog's  valise." 

"What  does  that  mean?" 

"It's  Irish  for  'not  on  your  life."' 

"But  you  must."    She  rose  and  came  to  me. 

"Impossible." 

She  sat  down  beside  me  and  put  her  hand  on  my 
arm,  almost  childishly.  "You're  the  only  person 
that's  ever  tried  to  help  me.  It's  the  first  time  any 
one  has  ever  told  me  the  truth  about  myself.  I 
want  to  change.  I  want  people  to  like  me.  I  want 
to  be  affectionate — and  happy." 

"You're  wangling  me,"  I  said. 

Her  eyes  glinted  mischievously.  "You  like  me. 
I  know  you  do,  or  you  wouldn't  have  taken  so  much 
trouble  with  me." 

"You're  a  hypocrite.  You're  flattering  me. 
You're  trying  to  flirt  with  me." 

She  began  to  laugh.  "Come  on.  It'll  be  fun. 
Come  and  help  me.  You  started  me.  You'll  have 
to  see  me  through. 

[303] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

"What  are  you  going  to  do?" 

"Come  along  and  see." 

She  had  me  by  the  sleeve.  She  pulled  me  to  my 
feet  and  started  off  with  me.  I  went  like  a  dog  on 
a  rope,  planting  myself  in  an  obstinate  protest 
every  now  and  then,  and  being  coaxed  and  jerked 
along  with  determined  high  spirits. 

"I'm  a  writer,"  I  complained,  "not  a  psychi 
atrist.  I  can't  help  you  with  Cope." 

"Then  come  and  see  a  movie  queen  snaring  her 
mate.  You  can  write  it  up — after  I've  landed 
him." 

"Don't  be  so  forward.    Let  go  my  hand." 

"You'd  better  come  or  I'll  put  my  arm  around 

you." 

"Heaven  forbid!" 

We  were  at  the  dining-room  door.  "I'll  go,"  I 
said,  "if  you  tell  me  exactly  what  you  plan  to  do — 
and  to  say." 

"I'll  tell  you  in  the  car,"  she  cried.  "Get  your 
coat  on.  I'll  run  upstairs  and  explain  to  mother  that 
we're  going  for  a  little  drive  in  the  moonlight." 

And  while  she  was  upstairs  a  miracle  happened. 
After  I  had  put  on  my  overcoat  in  the  hall,  my  mind 
began  to  work.  I  had  an  idea. 

"Listen,"  I  said,  as  she  came  downstairs  swiftly 
to  me.  "I  want  you  to  recall  something.  What 
was  the  color  of  the  costume  you  wore  in  the  throne- 
room  scene  of  'Her  Royal  Happiness'?  I  mean  in 
the  stage  production." 

[304] 


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She  tilted  her  head  prettily  and  closed  one  eye. 
"Pink!" 

"Pink?    Not  really!" 

"Yes.    Pink  silk." 

"Fine!    Have  you  a  pink  dress  you  can  put  on?" 

"Don't  be  ridiculous.     I  can't  wear  pink  any 


more." 


"Why  not?" 

"  Where  are  your  eyes?  "  She  indicated  the  dark- 
brown  wave  over  her  ear.  "I  used  to  have  fair  hair 
as  a  child  and  they  blondined  it." 

"Were  you  fair  haired  as  the  Princess  Aline?" 

"Certainly." 

"Oh,  gosh!"  That  was  a  knockout.  "Mary's 
fair." 

"Of  course." 

"I'll  bet  Cope  has  a  fair-haired  love  image." 

"A  what?" 

"Never  mind.  Have  you  anything  at  all  pink 
that  you  can  wear?" 

She  began  to  shake  her  head,  and  stopped. 
"I've  a  silk  sweater — a  sort  of  rose  pink." 

"Great!    The  very  thing.    Put  that  on." 

She  started  upstairs  again  to  get  it,  and  then 
another  miracle  happened.  I  had  another  idea. 
"  Wait !  Have  you  a  blond  wig?  " 

She  turned  on  the  stair  to  confront  me,  flushed 
and  spunky.  "Now  listen  to  me.  If  I  can't  get 
him  without  wearing  a  blond  wig,  I'll  die  an  old 
maid." 

[305] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

"All  right,"  I  said.  "I  don't  think  he's  good 
enough  for  you,  anyway.  His  taste  is  immature." 

She  made  a  face  at  me.  "Talk  about  flirting. 
Wait  a  minute  till  I  get  the  sweater.  I  have  a  blond 
wig  at  the  studio.  I'll  find  it  to-morrow,  if  you'll 
tell  me  why  you  want  it." 

"I'll  tell  you  on  our  'little  drive  in  the  moon- 
light.": 

10 

The  car  was  what  is  called  a  landaulet,  I  think; 
and  the  chauffeur,  sitting  outside,  got  most  of  the 
moon.  Cope  had  built  himself  a  Spanish  rough-cast, 
on  a  foothill  above  Clearwater  Canon,  and  the  drive 
to  his  house  ought  to  have  been  magnificent  with 
mountain  vistas  as  we  ascended  the  ravine,  and 
with  wide  moonlit  panoramas  as  we  came  out  on 
the  hilltops.  What  I  saw  of  it  was  only  a  blurred 
background  for  Janet  Nast.  She  had  put  on  her 
silk  sweater  and  a  jaunty  old-rose  sports  cap  that 
looked  like  a  soldier's,  and  she  was  as  full  of  the 
devil  as  a  Hollywood  flapper  on  her  way  to  a  hootch 
party. 

"Why  must  I  wear  pink?"  she  asked. 

"Because  you  wore  pink  when  he  first  fell  in  love 
with  you.  And  then  pink-silk  underwear  saved  his 
life." 

She  remembered  the  story  and  shrieked  with 
laughter.  "I'll  get  some  pink  things,"  she  cried. 
"Camisoles  and  shoulder  ribbons  and " 

[306] 


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"That  '11  do." 

"Prude!    Puritan!    Step-ins!" 

"The  word  is  new  to  me.  Now  get  down  to  busi 
ness.  I  want  you  to  play  a  blond  in  his  next 
picture — in  a  yellow  wig  and  all  the  pankest  pink 
you  can  find." 

"I  hate  pink,  too." 

"And  don't  give  it  up  after  you  marry — the  way 
girls  give  up  the  piano.  And  if  you  can't  sleep  in  a 
blond  wig,  wear  a  pink-silk  boudoir  cap." 

She  shrieked  again. 

"Now  be  serious.  Here's  what  you  have  to  do 
to-night."  And  I  began  to  lay  out  our  next  scene. 

She  listened  with  smiling  gravity,  in  high  color, 
like  a  child  just  come  into  school  from  the  play 
ground.  We  planned  out  the  whole  act  carefully. 
"And  don't  overdo  it,"  I  cautioned  her.  "Play  it 
to  me  as  much  as  you  can,  and  just  take  him  in  as 
a  spectator." 

"I  can  act  a  little,"  she  said,  demurely.  "I  was 
on  the  stage  when  I  was  younger." 

"I'm  told  you  were  fierce.  Besides,  this  isn't 
acting.  It's  life.  Nothing's  worse  than  the  actress 
who  acts  off  the  stage.  You  try  acting  with  Cope 
and  he'll  know  it  before  you  get  through  your 
entrance  speech." 

"That's  true,"  she  said,  sobered.  "I'll  just  try 
to  feel  it,  and  not  to  think  it.  We're  almost  there. 
Keep  quiet  a  minute  and  I'll  see  if  I  can  get  the 
mood." 

[307] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

She  reminded  me  of  Mary  Shaw  taking  a  silent 
moment  to  hypnotize  herself  in  the  wings  before 
going  on  for  a  tragic  scene.  I  began  to  believe  that 
there  might  be  dramatic  possibilities  in  Janet, 
after  all. 

We  arrived  at  Cope's  door,  quiet  and  preoccupied. 
She  gave  our  names  to  the  Japanese  boy  absent- 
mindedly.  We  waited  in  the  reception  hall  in 
silence — the  hall  of  a  Spanish-American  museum, 
full  of  rusty  grillwork  and  mission  bells  and  worm- 
eaten  wooden  saints.  Janet  sat  in  an  inquisitorial 
chair,  with  an  air  of  wrapt  devotion,  her  head  bowed. 
When  the  Japanese  boy  returned  for  us,  she  rose  for 
her  stage  entrance  and  gave  me  an  encouraging  and 
protective  smile.  I  followed  her  in. 

Cope  was  waiting  for  us  at  the  far  end  of  a  studio- 
living-room  as  big  as  a  church,  in  front  of  a  fire 
place  that  had  been  built  in  an  alcove  of  bookshelves 
and  fireside  settles,  very  quaint  and  cozy.  He  looked 
like  a  monk  in  his  long  dressing  gown  and  mediaeval 
slippers,  standing  to  receive  us,  but  still  reading  a 
manuscript,  which  he  lowered  to  lay  on  the  table 
as  we  approached.  His  eyes  did  not  part  with  the 
page  till  Janet  was  near  enough  to  begin  some  apol 
ogy  for  intruding  on  him.  Then  he  held  out  his 
hand,  smiling  hospitably,  but  without  speaking,  and 
looking  from  one  to  the  other  of  us  as  she  continued. 

By  the  time  we  were  seated  in  the  firelight  she 
had  explained  that  she  and  I  had  been  discussing 
the  film  of  "Sappho"  and  that  I  had  convinced  her 

[308] 


VANCE  COPE 


it  should  have  a  happy  ending.  He  watched  her  and 
listened  to  her,  his  gaze  moving  reflectively  from  her 
pink  sweater  to  her  rose-pink  cap,  and  then  down 
again  to  the  pink  flush  of  excitement  that  had  over 
spread  her  olive  pallor.  He  seemed  perhaps  mildly 
puzzled. 

"You  see,"  she  explained,  "as  Sappho,  I'll  realize 
that  Jean  ought  to  marry  and  have  children  if  he's 
ever  to  be  happy — that  he  can't  be  happy  with  me 
in  the  sort  of  life  we've  been  living,  so  I  give  him 
up  to  the  girl  he  wants  to  marry;  and  then,  after 
you've  shown  them  on  their  honeymoon  together, 
you  show  me  sitting  all  alone,  at  a  window  or  some 
where,  trying  to  smile  bravely  and  thinking  of  him. 
I  don't  think  that  would  be  just  hokum,  do  you? 
I  think  it's  true  of  lots  of  women.  I  know  it  is  of 
me."  She  smiled  at  him,  appealingly  embarrassed, 
but  determined  to  tell  the  truth.  "I'd  give  up  the 
man  I  loved,  if  I  thought  it  would  make  him  happier. 
I  mean  I  would  if  I  really  loved  him.  I  think  that's 
what  love  is — real  love."  And  then  she  shot  an 
eloquently  shy  glance  at  me.  And  he  understood. 

He  understood  the  change  in  her  and  the  cause 
of  it.  He  understood  that  we  were  in  love  with  each 
other.  His  eyes  opened  slowly,  enlightened.  And 
I  felt  myself  begin  to  redden  with  guilt  and  em 
barrassment.  The  little  devil ! 

I  took  refuge  in  a  search  through  my  pockets  for 
a  cigarette. 

"He's  going  to  help  me  with  mother,"  she  went 

[309] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

on.  "You  see,  the  way  we  plan  the  ending,  I'll 
have  just  as  good  a  part  as  ever — better,  even — 
but  if  she's  opposed  to  it,  I'm  going  to  stand  out 
against  her.  I'll  have  to  some  day.  I  ought  to 
have,  long  ago.  And  I  would  have  if  I'd  had  anyone 
to  help  me.  All  my  life  I've  wanted  to,  though  I'm 
so  fond  of  her  and  owe  her  so  much."  She  had 
begun  to  pick  at  the  hem  of  her  silk  sweater,  her 
eyes  down.  "You — you  don't  know  how — how 
cruel  a  mother  can  be.  And  no  one  ever  helps  you 
against  her.  I — I  couldn't  make  the  fight  alone. 
If  anyone  had  helped  me  it  might  have  been 
different." 

There  were  tears  in  her  voice,  and  he  was  blinking 
at  her,  sincerely  moved.  I  communed  with  my  life 
less  cigarette  and  got  no  response  from  it.  There 
was  a  match  safe  on  a  table  back  in  the  room.  I 
trusted  they  would  understand  that  I  was  going  for 
a  light.  I  rose  as  inconspicuously  as  possible  and 
withdrew  from  the  picture. 

And  I  did  not  return  to  it.  I  was  too  nervous. 
I  had  a  sort  of  stage  fright.  I  was  sure  that  if  I 
moved  to  rejoin  them  and  caught  Cope's  eye,  I 
should  grin  palely  at  him  in  a  self-conscious  con 
fession  that  I  was  trying  to  play  a  part  and  knew 
I  was  doing  it  badly.  I  stood  staring  at  the  colored 
covers  of  some  magazines  on  the  table  until  I  began 
to  feel  muscle-bound.  Then  I  tiptoed  from  the 
stage  to  a  bookcase  in  the  wings,  and  pretended  to 
be  looking  at  the  titles. 

[310] 


VANCE  COPE 


I  glanced  back,  once,  over  my  shoulder.  She  was 
getting  along  very  well  without  me.  Cope  was 
sitting  on  the  settle  beside  her  and  patting  one  of 
her  hands,  while  she  used  her  handkerchief  with  the 
other.  I  think  I  must  have  felt  sorry  for  him; 
I  know  his  books  struck  me  as  pathetic. 

They  were  book-agent  sets  of  "universal"  anthol 
ogies,  collections  of  cabinet  specimens  of  the  uni 
verse's  Best  Literature,  a  row  of  universal  history's 
Great  Events  (edited  with  paste  pot  and  shears  from 
all  the  uncopyrighted  historians  of  the  second-hand 
bookshops)  the  universe's  Greatest  Speeches  and 
Most  Famous  Lives  and  most  approved  old  mono 
graphs  of  superseded  Science;  and  beyond  these 
was  a  ragtag  of  popular  fiction  evidently  sent  to 
him  by  literary  agents  who  had  moving-picture 
rights  to  sell. 

The  books  struck  me  as  pathetic,  and  my  own 
position  before  them  struck  me  as  absurd.  I  could 
neither  take  on  my  role  again  nor  escape  it.  And 
what  a  role!  I  had  gone  behind  his  back  to  tell  his 
star  what  should  be  done  with  the  end  of  his  film. 
I  had  been  making  love  to  her.  I  had  been  setting 
her  against  her  mother  and  obviously  intriguing  to 
gain  a  controlling  influence  over  her,  for  some  pur 
pose  of  my  own.  I  could  foresee  how  Cope  and 
Mamma  Nast  would  get  together,  first  thing  in  the 
morning,  and  prepare  a  little  cup  of  necessary 
poison  for  me,  and  arrange  a  convincing  story  to 
tell  Janet  in  order  to  account  for  my  sudden  de- 

[311] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

parture  for  another  world.  And  I  could  foresee  how 
Janet,  as  she  listened  to  them,  would  bite  a  trem 
bling,  twisted  under-lip — struggling  to  suppress  a 
smile. 

"Where  are  you?"  she  called,  at  last. 

"I'm  here,"  I  answered  unconvincingly. 

She  must  have  divined,  from  my  tone  of  voice, 
that  she  could  get  no  aid  from  me.  She  finished  her 
act  alone,  rose  on  a  conspiring  handclasp,  and  saun 
tered  toward  me  with  Cope.  "It's  all  right,"  she 
assured  me,  smiling  with  triumphant  tenderness. 
"He  thinks  our  ending  is  right  and  he's  going  to 
help  me  with  mother." 

I  muttered  nothing  intelligible.  She  slipped  her 
arm  through  mine  and  swung  me  round,  so  that  she 
might  walk  between  us  to  the  hall.  "Don't  come 
out  with  us,"  she  cried,  gaily,  and  dragged  me  away 
in  a  burst  of  high  spirits,  without  waiting  for  the 
formal  good-bys.  "  See  you  in  the  morning.  Don't 
forget  your  promise." 

He  waved  to  us,  smiling  with  his  lips,  a  look  of 
jealous  speculation  in  his  eyes. 

She  hurried  to  her  car.  "Home,  please,"  she 
ordered. 

"What  came  over  you?"  she  remonstrated,  as 
we  got  in. 

"You  little  devil,"  I  said,  cornering  her,  "what 
made  you  pretend  /  was  in  love  with  you?" 

"Well,"  she  said,  "/  pretended  I  was  in  love  with 
you,  didn't  I?" 

[312] 


VANCE  COPE 


And  whoop !  She  covered  her  face  with  her  hands 
and  began  to  laugh  and  to  cry.  "It's  terrible  and 
it's — it's  perfectly  ridiculous.  He  couldn't  take  his 
eyes  off  the  pink.  He — he  hasn't  looked  at  me  like 
that  for  years.  It's  too  funny!  It's  awful!  He 
liked  me  the  moment  he  saw  me.  I'm — I'm  ashamed 
of  myself.  It's  like  trapping  some  animal.  It's  like 
being  a  decoy  duck."  She  was  sniffling  and  giggling 
together.  "I  can't  love  him  if  he's  going  to  be  so 
simple." 

"Don't  you  worry,"  I  warned  her,  "He's  not 
going  to  be  simple.  You've  made  him  jealous  of 
me.  You've  made  him  think  I  have  some  plan  up 
my  sleeve — that  I'm  intriguing  to  get  control  of 
you  and  your  mother  so  as  to  sell  you  moving- 
picture  rights,  probably.  When  you  see  what  he'll 
do  to  me,  you'll  not  think  he's  simple." 

That  sent  her  off  into  another  hilarious  choking 
fit.  I  had  been  "too  funny"!  I  had  looked  "so 
queer"!  What  was  I  afraid  of?  He  couldn't  kill 
me,  could  he? 

"All  right,"  I  said.  "I  don't  care.  I  don't  want 
to  write  any  films,  anyway.  They  bore  me.  But 
I  don't  want  him  to  go  out  of  his  way  to  humiliate 
me  publicly,  and  you  can  never  tell  what  an  egotist 
Like  that  will  do.  I'll  get  my  resignation  ready  to 
night,  and  the  first  sign  I  see " 

"No,  no.  You  mustn't.  You've  got  to  help  me. 
You  mustn't  back  out  now.  I  can't  do  it  alone. 
I  don't  know  what  to  do  next." 

[313] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

"The  first  thing  you'll  do,  if  you  want  me  to  help 
you,  you'll  get  it  out  of  his  crop  that  I'm  in  love 
with  you." 

"What's  the  disgrace  in  that  ?    Lots  of " 

"Never  mind.  And  quit  pretending  that  you're 
in  love  with  me." 

"But  I  like  you.    I  do,  really." 

"No  doubt.  I  appreciate  my  charm.  But  you'll 
kindly  resist  it.  Otherwise,  by  this  time  to-morrow 
night  I'll  be  climbing  mountains  on  the  Limited." 

"Very  well."  She  sighed  enormously.  "All  is 
over  between  us.  Now  what?" 

It  was  easier  to  ask  than  to  answer.  So  much 
depended  on  her  ability  to  manage  her  mother. 
And  how  did  Mamma  Nast  feel  toward  Cope,  and 
what  had  been  the  terms  of  their  association  in  the 
past?  And  what  was  the  honest  truth  of  Janet's 
relations  with  him  during  all  those  years? 

She  explained  the  last  quite  frankly.  When  she 
first  began  to  work  with  Cope,  she  knew — she  could 
tell  from  the  way  he  looked  at  her — that  he  was — 
well,  that  he  liked  her.  But  Cope  must  have  been 
aware  that  if  her  mother  saw  he  was  in  love  with 
Janet  it  would  be  the  end  of  him;  so  he  was  very 
formal  and  discreet  in  his  manner  toward  her. 
Naturally,  Janet  thought  that  cowardly  of  him. 
She  despised  it.  She  made  herself  feel  that  she 
despised  him.  She  behaved  to  him  with  a  studied 
and  slighting  indifference. 

Then,  as  their  films  succeeded,  he  became  more 

[314] 


VANCE  COPE 


and  more  important  in  their  partnership,  so  that 
her  mother  would  have  hesitated  to  break  with  him, 
even  if  she  had  known  that  he  was  in  love  with  her 
daughter.  But  by  that  time  Janet's  attitude  to 
him  had  become  fixed.  She  was  too  proud  to  change 
it.  She  would  not  make  any  advances  to  him.  She 
saw  many  repellent  littlenesses  in  him,  and  she 
exaggerated  them  in  her  own  eyes,  so  as  to  justify 
to  herself  her  manner  toward  him.  "I  don't  won 
der,"  she  said,  "that  he's  been  afraid  of  me." 

Did  her  mother  realize,  now,  how  important  it 
was  to  keep  him? 

"Yes,"  she  said,  "I  think  so.  She's  been  very 
diplomatic  about  a  lot  of  things  lately.  You  see, 
we're  not  making  so  much  money  as  we  used  to, 
and — though  they  don't  tell  me — I  know  they  think 
it's  because  the  public's  tired  of  me.  Everybody 
agrees  that  he's  a  great  director.  All  the  critics  say 
so.  But  they're  complaining  that  I'm  'cold' ! — that 
I  have  no  charm  any  more." 

She  broke  a  little  on  that  confession.  I  hurried 
her  away  from  it.  "Suppose  you  were  to  tell  your 
mother  that  he's  in  love  with  Mary  Merivale,  and 
that  he's  likely  to  leave  you  because  of  this  dispute 
about  the  end  of  'Sappho,'  and  take  Mary  and  make 
a  star  of  her,  would  your  mother  help  you  to  hold 
him?" 

"I  think  so.  She  suspects  what's  the  matter  with 
him.  She  told  me  so  this  afternoon." 

"Well,  then,  what  would  she  do  if  you  told  her 
21  [ 315  ] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

that  you  were  in  love  with  him  and  wanted  to  marry 
him?" 

"I  don't  know.  She  dislikes  him.  She  thinks 
he's  conceited  and  unmanly." 

"Those  are  the  defects  of  his  qualities." 

"I  know.    I  understand  him.    But  she  doesn't." 

"Then  you  don't  think  it  would  be  wise  to  tell 
her?" 

She  hesitated.    "No." 

"We're  clear  this  far,  then:  you  can  tell  her  what 
the  situation  is  between  Cope  and  Mary  and  get  her 
to  help  break  it  up.  But  you  have  to  take  Cope's 
side  in  a  quarrel  with  her,  in  order  to  work  the 
symbol  of  the  cruel  parent  on  him.  I'm  afraid  of  a 
real  quarrel  with  your  mother.  Aren't  you?" 

"Yes,"  she  admitted.  "I  couldn't  go  through 
with  it.  I'm  too  fond  of  her." 

"That's  what  I  feared.  And  she's  too  clever  to 
be  taken  in  by  a  pretense  of  a  quarrel.  That  leaves 
only  one  chance.  You'll  have  to  get  her  to  stage  a 
quarrel  with  you  and  act  the  cruel  and  unnatural 
parent  for  Cope's  benefit." 

"How  can  I  get  her  to  do  that  ?  What  reason  can 
I  give  her?" 

The  car  had  drawn  up  at  her  door.  "I  haven't 
the  slightest  idea,"  I  said.  "Good  night." 

"But  you  can't!"  she  wailed.  "You  can't  leave 
me  like  this.  You've  got  to  help  me!" 

"You  don't  need  any  help,"  I  assured  her,  sin 
cerely.  "You're  much  cleverer  than  I  thought." 

[316] 


VANCE  COPE 


I  backed  out  of  the  car  in  spite  of  her  protests. 
"Say  good  night  to  your  mother  for  me.  And  be 
kind  to  Cope." 

"Coward!"  she  shot  at  me. 

I  waved  my  hat  to  her,  as  a  white  flag  of  eti 
quette,  and  departed  on  the  run.  I  had  had  enough 
amateur  psychiatry  for  one  day. 

11 

I  might  better  have  stayed.  My  curiosity  kept 
me  awake  half  the  night,  wondering  what  she  would 
say  to  her  mother,  and  how  her  mother  would  take 
it,  and  what  they  would  decide  to  tell  Cope,  and 
how,  for  his  part,  Cope  would  proceed  to  handle 
my  supposed  affair  with  Janet.  I  was  as  obsessed 
by  the  situation  as  if  it  had  developed  in  a  story  I 
was  trying  to  write;  and  I  dramatized  the  logical 
incidents  of  alternative  plots  unceasingly  and  to  no 
convincing  end. 

You  know  how  the  midnight-brain  of  insomnia 
magnifies  its  worries.  I  began  to  feel  the  social  re 
sponsibilities  of  influencing,  or  even  trying  to  influ 
ence,  such  important  public  characters.  They  were 
setting  the  standards  of  the  nation  in  their  films, 
and  not  merely  standards  of  clothes  and  ways  of 
living,  but  of  manners  and  ambitions,  of  morals  and 
ideals.  If  Cope  and  Janet  Nast  married  happily, 
wouldn't  they  reflect  their  new  view  of  life  in  more 
encouraging  pictures  of  matrimony?  What  an  effect 

[317] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

that  might  have  on  the  American  public  who  re 
ceived  from  Cope,  now,  nothing  but  a  cynical 
Broadway  view  of  marriage!  And  shouldn't  I  be 
finally  responsible  for  having  caused  the  change? 

I  was  hugely  vague  about  it.  My  thought  moved 
in  a  large  sleepy  delusion  of  grandeur.  I  fancied 
myself  rather  as  the  Baron  Stockmar  of  the  situa 
tion,  arranging  his  pupil's  marriage  with  Queen 
Victoria  and  foreseeing  the  million  implications  of 
what  that  marriage  would  mean  to  the  Victorian 
period,  with  its  ideal  of  royal  respectability  and  the 
white  flower  of  a  blameless  married  life. 

I  fell  asleep  feeling  important. 

In  the  morning  I  woke  to  a  pessimistic  view  of 
my  effect  on  the  world,  because  at  the  foot  of  the 
bed  there  were  a  little  table  covered  with  a  face 
towel,  a  round  black  tray,  a  thick  crockery  water 
pitcher  standing  on  its  head,  and  an  upended  thick 
glass  beside  it.  I  knew,  without  looking,  that  the 
tray  was  decorated  with  an  all-over  design  of  gilt 
asterisks.  For  how  many  years,  in  how  many 
American  hotels,  had  I  seen  this  unvarying  bedside 
arrangement!  Who  had  decreed  it?  No  one.  Who 
could  change  it?  No  one.  Wars  might  come, 
revolutions,  earthquakes,  panics,  social  and  moral 
upheavals  and  volcanic  change;  but  at  the  end  of 
it  all,  if  you  walked  into  any  of  the  bedrooms  in  any 
of  these  commercial  hotels,  you  would  still  find  the 
little  black  tray  of  gilt  asterisks,  the  thick  white 
crockery  water  pitcher  on  its  head,  the  heavy  drink - 

[  318  I 


VANCE  COPE 


ing  glass,  the  towel  tablecover  with  the  hotel  name 
worked  on  it  in  red  thread,  and  the  inevitable  bed 
side  table.  The  mystery  of  human  habit !  The  eter 
nal  inertia  of  human  life !  The  incredible  durability 
of  unreasonable  reality!  In  such  a  world,  what 
difference  would  it  make  what  Cope  learned  or 
taught  about  women  or  marriage  or  anything  else? 
No  difference  whatever.  None.  Not  a  particle. 

In  that  mood  I  shaved  myself.  And  why  did  I 
shave?  Who  had  ordained  that  all  American  men 
should  shave  their  faces,  but  not,  like  the  Chinese, 
their  heads?  Why  must  I  wear  a  collar  and  tie? 
Why  must  I  put  my  watch  in  the  left-hand  pocket 
of  my  waistcoat  and  my  small  change  in  the  right? 
Mysteries!  Set  and  unalterable  mysteries !  I  went 
downstairs  to  breakfast.  Why  must  I  have  coffee 
for  breakfast,  grapefruit,  bacon?  Who  could  now 
change  that  American  ideal  of  the  morning  meal? 
No  mortal  power.  Yet  people  worried  about  the 
dangers  of  a  bloody  revolution  if  radical  agitators 
continued  to  be  agitated!  And  I  had  felt  im 
portant  at  the  prospect  of  influencing  the  themes  of 
Cope's  moving  pictures  so  as  to  correct  their  ill 
effect  on  the  young  American  male  mind ! 

I  started  out  for  the  studio  feeling  a  godlike 
superiority  to  myself  and  an  exalted  indifference  to 
Cope  and  his  love  affairs;  and  when  I  arrived  at  the 
lot  I  saw  it  as  trivial  as  an  ant  hill.  The  scenario 
department  was  in  a  ridiculous  shack.  They  do 
not  have  to  build  against  the  weather  in  Los 

[319] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

Angeles.  They  make  a  moving-picture  office  out  of 
wall  board  and  scantlings,  as  massive  as  a  house  of 
cards.  I  stood  in  front  of  the  scenario  department 
and  blew  at  it,  experimentally.  I  was  not  surprised 
to  see  the  door  fly  open.  I  had  expected  to  see  the 
side  of  the  wall  cave  in. 

The  boy  who  had  opened  the  door  announced, 
"They  want  you  in  Mr.  Cope's  office." 

You  cannot  explain  these  moods  to  an  office  boy. 
I  had  to  pretend  that  Cope  was  important,  and  go 
to  see  what  he  wanted. 

I  went  with  indifference.  And  it  was  an  indif 
ference  that  insulated  me  and  protected  me  from 
Cope.  Any  meeting  with  such  a  man  is  a  dangerous 
confrontation.  Sensitive  artists  of  his  type,  who 
have  come  up  out  of  a  neglected  childhood,  arrive 
with  an  ego  that  is  all  pride  and  thin  skin.  In  their 
fearful  younger  days  they  watched  and  studied 
everyone  around  them,  apprehensively,  not  knowing 
from  whom  the  next  cruelty  might  come;  conse 
quently,  they  have  the  habit  of  being  very  alert  and 
knowing  and  apparently  intuitive  in  their  human 
contacts.  They  penetrate  you  by  an  act  of  sym 
pathetic  imagination,  and  what  they  perceive  that 
is  dangerous  to  them  their  egotism  marks  with 
immediate  alarm.  They  are  always  asking  for 
comment  on  their  art,  and  they  are  not  to  be  de 
ceived  by  servile  praise;  yet  criticism  can  hardly 
be  made  so  diplomatic  that  it  will  not  offend  them; 
and  once  their  Napoleonic  ego  is  offended,  they  are 

[320] 


VANCE  COPE 


as  Corsican  as  Napoleon  in  their  pursuit  of  revenge. 
The  theater  is  full  of  them — actors,  writers,  direc 
tors,  and  producing  managers.  They  make  the 
production  of  a  play  an  infuriating  adventure  in 
diplomacy.  I  went  in  to  Cope  with  a  long  experi 
ence  of  him  in  the  back  of  my  mind,  under  the 
immediate  indifference. 

He  had  an  office  of  green  wicker  furniture  and 
green  grass  rugs,  chintz  curtains  and  cushions, 
flowers  on  his  desk  and  sunlight  in  his  windows, 
all  very  airy  and  summery  and  aesthetic.  He  was  in 
light  clothes  and  a  polka-dot  tie,  and  the  tie  struck 
me  as  significant.  I  had  never  seen  him  wear  any 
thing  but  a  black  cravat  before.  And  he  was  cordial. 
Why?  It  was  not  the  cordiality  of  condescension. 
It  was  friendly. 

He  wanted  to  talk  to  me  about  the  ending  of 
"Sappho,"  he  said.  Of  course,  what  he  wanted  to 
do  was  to  warn  me  against  going  behind  his  au 
thority  to  discuss  his  scenarios  with  any  of  his  cast. 
"You  have  to  be  careful  what  you  say  to  these 
people,  they're  so  temperamental."  I  caught  his 
assumption  of  our  equal  superiority  to  actors. 
"Fortunately,  the  ending  you  suggested  falls  in 
with  my  plans.  And  it's  good — it's  extremely 
good." 

He  was  more  than  friendly.  He  was  treating  me 
with  respect.  Undoubtedly!  And  I  was  alarmed. 
Why  respect?  The  picture  producers  in  Los  Angeles 
have  an  old  feud  with  these  "damn  authors"  who 

[321] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

are  always  complaining  to  the  public  that  "we've 
spoiled  their  stuff."  Why  now,  suddenly,  respect? 

The  tone  of  a  carefully  discreet  reference  to  Janet 
Nast  gave  me  the  clue;  in  spite  of  his  care,  there 
was  jealousy  in  his  manner.  Was  he  respectful 
because  he  thought  I  had  succeeded  in  arousing 
some  sentimental  response  in  Janet,  the  forbidding, 
the  unapproachable,  the  watched  and  guarded. 
The  male  animal  of  this  sort  is  amusing.  In  his 
predacious  eye,  any  love  affair  is  a  scalp  on  the  belt, 
and  here  was  a  scalp  indeed!  Nasty  Janie's! 

He  had  heard  something  of  my  criticism  of  her 
at  luncheon,  and  he  asked  me  what  I  had  said.  It 
was  impossible  to  tell  him.  I  could  not  offer  him 
that  theory  of  the  subconscious  mind  in  the  movies. 
If  he  had  never  heard  of  it — which  was  likely — it 
would  come  to  him  as  a  criticism  of  his  ignorance, 
and  offend  him.  Besides,  as  an  artistic  egotist,  he 
would  be  insulted  by  the  idea  that  his  pictures  had 
been  the  product  of  anything  but  his  sovereign 
directing  intelligence.  I  compromised  by  explaining 
that  I  had  criticized  Janet  Nast  without  knowing 
her,  and  that  since  meeting  her  I  had  changed  my 
opinion. 

It  was  true,  but  not  true  in  the  way  that  he  took 
it.  He  accepted  it  as  indicating  less  a  change  of 
opinion  than  a  change  of  heart.  I  let  him. 

"You  see,"  I  said  ingenuously,  "I  found  that  what 
I  was  criticizing  in  her  was  really  the  effect  of  her 
mother's  tyranny.  That's  why  I  stirred  her  up  to 

[322] 


VANCE  COPE 


revolt."  And  I  tried  to  explain  to  him  how  her  feel 
ing  against  her  mother,  repressed  by  her  dutiful 
affection,  came  out  in  bitterness  and  dissatisfaction 
with  everybody  and  everything  except  Mamma 
Nast.  "You'll  see  a  change  in  her,"  I  predicted, 
"if  we  can  get  her  emotional  responses  normal." 

He  replied,  with  a  straight  face,  "I  see  a  change 
in  her  already."  While  he  was  replying,  his  desk 
phone  rang.  He  swung  around  to  take  it,  giving 
me  his  back  and  shoulders,  and  there  was  some 
thing  too  sudden  in  the  movement;  it  was  as  if  he 
had  ducked  to  hide  a  grin.  As  he  listened,  I  saw  his 
scalp  move  back  on  his  head.  He  had  evidently 
raised  his  eyebrows  in  some  expression  that  he 
wished  to  hide  from  me,  but  his  voice  was  merely 
formal.  "Ask  Miss  Nast  to  come  in." 

I  rose  to  leave.  "Don't  go,"  he  said.  "We  can 
discuss  our  new  ending  together."  And  the  tone  in 
which  he  said  "our"  was  just  a  trifle  off. 

He  was  enjoying  some  little  game  of  superior 
acuteness  with  himself,  and  applauding  it  with  a 
psychic  chuckle.  I  nodded.  I  foresaw  that  my 
turn  to  chuckle  might  arrive  with  Janet. 

And  it  arrived. 

She  burst  in  like  an  ingenue.  "I've  done  it,"  she 
announced,  excitedly,  before  she  had  closed  the  door. 

"Done  what?" 

She  made  a  dramatic  gesture  that  said,  "Wait  a 
moment."  She  shut  the  door  and  came  over  to  us, 
and  stood  swallowing,  her  lips  twitching,  as  if  she 

[323] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

were  unable  to  speak  for  the  exultation  that  caught 
in  her  throat.  And  then,  unexpectedly,  the  twitch 
ing  became  a  pathetic  trembling  of  the  mouth,  and 
she  sat  down,  unable  to  speak. 

"What's  the  matter?" 

"I've  quarreled  with  my  mother,"  she  said,  in  a 
painful  voice. 

"About  the  picture?" 

She  looked  up  at  me  through  a  bright  film  of 
tears.  "About  everything.  I  told  her  everything." 

"What  did  she  say?" 

She  shook  her  head  blindly.  "She's  going  away. 
For  a  little  while.  Now,  you — you'll  have  to  help 
me.  Both  of  you."  She  appealed  to  Cope.  "I 
don't  know  how  to  do  a  thing  for  myself.  I  quar 
reled  with  her  to  get  the  picture  done  the  way  you 
want  it,  and  you'll  have  to  help  me.  You'll  have 
to  help  me." 

We  were  both  standing,  Cope  and  I.  He  glanced 
at  me.  I  looked  past  him,  out  the  window,  thought 
fully.  And  as  I  moved  away  from  her,  in  the 
direction  of  my  gaze,  he  went  to  her  and  placed  his 
hand  on  her  shoulder.  "Don't  be  afraid,"  he  said, 
very  deep  in  the  throat.  "We'll  take  care  of  you. 
What  has  happened?" 

She  confided  her  whole  story  to  him.  She  had 
told  her  mother  that  the  end  of  "Sappho"  had  to 
to  be  played  as  he  wished,  and  their  argument  about 
it  had  led  to  her  declaration  that  she  could  no  longer 
submit  to  her  mother's  control.  She  was  not  a 

[324] 


VANCE  COPE 


child.  She  had  a  mind  of  her  own,  and  she  was 
determined  to  have  a  life  of  her  own.  She  must 
have  her  own  bank  account  and  her  own  check  book. 
She  must  be  free  to  go  and  come  as  she  pleased,  with 
out  her  mother's  chaperonage.  Mamma  Nast  might 
administer  as  she  pleased  her  third  interest  in  the 
film  company,  but  Janet's  interest  was  to  be  in  her 
own  hands;  and  whenever  she  agreed  with  Cope 
she  would  vote  with  him.  And  so  forth. 

She  was  very  convincing  to  anyone  who  believed 
her,  but  I  remained  skeptical.  She  was  wearing  a 
frock  with  one  of  those  boat-shaped  necks  that  slip 
down  on  the  shoulder.  It  had  slipped  far  enough  to 
expose  a  shoulder  ribbon.  And  the  ribbon  was  pink. 

Cope  seemed  to  have  no  suspicion.  He  comforted 
and  reassured  her,  quite  sincerely.  It  would  all  come 
out  right  in  the  end.  Her  mother  might  be  angry 
for  the  moment,  but  that  would  pass.  Work  in  the 
studio  would  be  very  much  easier  for  everybody  if 
Janet  were  free  to  use  her  own  mind  and  have  her 
own  way. 

She  listened  to  him,  full  of  girlish  emotion,  her 
eyes  moist  and  grateful,  very  sweet  to  see.  And  she 
lifted  her  gaze  to  him  with  that  flattering  air  of 
sitting  at  his  feet  which  any  man  not  blinded  by  his 
own  egotism  might  well  distrust.  He  liked  it.  He 
smiled  and  cheered  her.  There  began  to  be  a  note 
of  gratified  authority  in  his  consolations. 

"Well,"  he  said,  at  last,  "they're  waiting  for  us 
on  the  set."  He  gave  her  a  final  pat  on  the  pink 

[325] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

shoulder  strap,  and  went  back  to  his  desk.  He  took 
up  some  papers  and  put  them  in  his  breast  pocket 
with  the  air  of  one  in  complete  command. 

She  rose  dutifully. 

"Can  you  join  me  here,"  he  asked,  "after  lunch 
eon,  to  go  over  the  new  ending?" 

He  did  not  ask  me. 

She  said,  "Yes,"  and  glanced  toward  me  specu- 
latively. 

I  was  crossing  to  my  chair  to  get  my  hat.  She 
smiled  at  me  with  an  abrupt  brilliancy  and  I  knew 
some  devilment  was  coming.  "I  didn't  tell  her," 
she  said  to  me,  shyly,  "about — you  know — what  we 
were  talking  about." 

Cope  became  suddenly  motionless,  pretending  to 
read  a  letter  that  lay  on  his  blotter. 

It  seemed  to  me  that  he  deserved  a  little  jolt.  I 
imitated  her  confiding  accent.  "Why  should  you,"  I 
insinuated,  "if  you're  to  be  free  to  live  your  own  life?" 

The  slightest  flicker  of  an  eyelid  showed  that  she 
understood  the  aim  of  that  shaft.  Cope  raised  his 
head  slowly  and  stared  at  us  like  a  deer  in  covert. 

"I'll  owe  it  all  to  you,"  she  said,  "if  it  turns  out 
happily." 

I  got  my  back  to  him,  escorting  her  out.  "All  I 
ask  is  to  see  you  happy." 

We  went  out  without  waiting  for  him,  and  started 
down  the  long  hall.  She  had  begun  to  cough  and 
redden. 

"Don't  laugh,"  I  pleaded.     "It's  my  funeral. 

[326] 


VANCE  COPE 


He'll  never  let  you  get  rid  of  your  mother  only  to  see 
you  fall  for  me." 

She  caught  my  arm,  staggering. 

"If  he  sees  you  laughing,"  I  warned  her,  "it  '11 
ruin  everything." 

"If  I  don't  laugh,"  she  gasped,  "I'll  choke." 

"Well,"  I  said,  "I'm  glad  it's  not  me  you're  pur 
suing.  I  couldn't  wish  him  a  worse  fate.  How  can 
you  laugh  at  the  man  you're  going  to  marry?" 

"Oh  dear!"  She  caught  a  long  sobering  breath. 
"He's  such  a  simp,  isn't  he?  He's  so  —  so  trans 
parent.  I  think  that's  why  I  like  him.  I  wouldn't 
dare  marry  a  man  I  couldn't  laugh  at.  Let's  wait 
here  for  him." 

We  were  at  an  angle  of  the  hall  where  it  turned  to 
go  out  to  the  stages.  We  looked  back  to  see  Cope 
coming.  "Tell  me,"  I  said.  "You  didn't  really 
quarrel  with  your  mother." 

She  shook  her  head,  smiling.  "She's  all  right. 
She's  a  good  sport.  She's  helping  me." 

I  waved  her  off.  "You're  too  much  for  me.  Good- 
by.  Cope  was  right  to  be  afraid  of  you.  Delilah  !  " 

She  replied,  leaning  to  me  in  a  charming  burlesque 
of  seductiveness:  "Philistine!  Shall  I  sell  my  Samson 
to  you?"  And  I  fled. 


Something  that  had  happened  among  us  inspired 
Cope  to  a  fit  of  furious  application  to  his  work.  It 
may  have  been  the  feeling  of  freedom  from  Mamma 

[  327  ] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

Nast's  interference  and  the  desire  to  make  good  use 
of  that  liberty  while  it  lasted.  Or  the  rowel  of 
jealousy  may  have  spurred  him  on  to  show  Janet 
what  an  artist  he  could  be.  Or  he  may  have  felt 
the  need  of  maximating  his  ego  in  my  eyes — and 
Mary  Merivale's.  In  any  case,  even  granting  all 
four  aims,  he  succeeded,  to  my  knowledge,  in  at 
least  three.  He  made  a  masterpiece  of  his  fancy 
dress  ball,  he  made  Janet  proud  of  him,  and  he  con 
vinced  me  that  he  was  something  of  a  genius. 

He  had  already  taken  several  long  shots  of  his 
dancers  in  the  mass,  and  I  supposed  that  he  intended 
to  let  these  suffice,  as  a  lazy  reporter  would  be  satis 
fied  to  describe  such  a  scene  in  meaningless  gen 
eralities.  Not  so.  He  began  now  to  build  up  his 
picture  on  the  screen  with  little  individual  incidents 
of  the  dance  and  interesting  close-ups  of  the  dancers. 
He  began  to  get  laughing  groups  that  had  much  of 
the  rollicking  robustiousness  of  Franz  Hals.  He 
seized  on  commonplace-looking  characters,  changed 
them,  rehearsed  them,  vivified  them  with  his  im 
agination,  and  individualized  them  in  illuminating 
bits  of  action  that  were  as  real  and  personal  as  life 
itself.  He  plucked  out  of  the  crowd  a  conventional 
clown,  painted  his  eyes  in  blind  black  hollows, 
widened  his  mouth  in  a  melancholy  black  droop, 
lengthened  his  white  sleeves  till  they  hung  six  inches 
over  his  hands  like  the  sleeves  of  a  scarecrow — or  a 
shroud — and  then  took  this  grotesque  and  drooping 
figure  of  bizarre  tragedy  and  carried  him  as  a  grin- 

[328] 


VANCE  COPE 


ning  death's  head  through  all  the  wildest  passages 
of  Bohemian  jollity.  He  succeeded  in  composing  a 
masquerade  ball  that  was  really  spirited  and  bac 
chanalian  and  not  humanly  incredible.  And  he 
devised  a  new  meeting  between  Jean  and  Sappho, 
with  the  prophetic  clown  watching  them  through  the 
fronds  of  a  potted  palm,  and  made  the  scene  as 
idyllically  sinister  as  a  first  meeting  between  Adam 
and  Eve  with  the  serpent  spying. 

He  drove  himself  and  everybody  else  unmerci 
fully,  possessed  by  his  ideas  and  determined  to 
realize  them;  but  he  worked  quietly,  slowly, 
absorbed  and  careful,  without  pose  and  without 
self -consciousness.  He  had  not  the  sort  of  ego  that 
shouts  and  tramples.  He  was  patient.  He  was 
diplomatic.  He  knew  exactly  what  he  wanted;  he 
knew  that  it  was  worth  getting;  and  he  got  it. 

He  did  not  let  them  stop  for  luncheon.  They  sent 
out  for  sandwiches  and  drank  soft  drinks  out  of  pop 
bottles  between  scenes.  Late  in  the  afternoon  I  came 
down  from  the  musicians'  gallery  over  the  ballroom, 
where  I  had  been  watching,  too  interested  to  think 
of  food,  and  begged  a  crust  from  Janet  Nast. 

She  was  triumphant.  "How  much  am  I  bid  for 
Samson  now?"  she  crowed. 

"No  doubt  of  it,"  I  admitted.     "He's  a  whale." 

"You  don't  know  the  half  of  it.  Wait  till  you  see 
some  of  these  bits  in  the  projection  room.  I'm  going 
to  see  them  with  him." 

"Have  you  been  doing  that  in  the  past?" 

[329] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

She  shook  her  head. 

"Then  keep  away  from  it.  He'll  never  let  you 
or  anyone  else  share  in  his  work.  Don't  make  that 
mistake.  It's  mother's  child.  Whether  it's  good  or 
bad,  it's  his,  and  he'll  have  no  one  influencing  it. 
How's  he  getting  on  with  Mary  Merivale?" 

"He  never  notices  any  of  us  when  he's  like 
this,"  she  complained. 

"Not  consciously,  no;  but  if  you  want  to  influence 
him  without  his  being  aware  of  how  you're  doing  it, 
now's  the  time  to  get  in  your  dirty  work." 

"If  you  don't  stop  speaking  of  it  in  those  terms, 
I'll  stop  talking  to  you  at  all." 

"I'll  watch  you,"  I  said,  going  back  to  my  gallery. 

We  were  on  that  scene  for  three  days  more  before 
Cope,  satisfied  that  he  had  done  his  best,  gave  the 
order  to  pay  off  the  extra  people  and  scrap  the  ball 
room  set.  By  that  time  all  the  studio  staff  had 
noticed  the  change  in  Nasty  Janie.  They  attributed 
it  to  her  mother's  absence.  Mamma  Nast,  it  was 
reported,  had  gone  to  New  York  on  a  business  trip, 
and  they  all  shared  in  the  feeling  of  release  which 
seemed  to  show  so  prettily  in  Janet.  She  had  be 
come  quite  friendly  and  pleasant  with  everybody. 
She  did  not  overdo  it.  She  let  it  grow  on  them  by 
patient,  slow  degrees.  She  allowed  Billy  to  make 
a  public  capture  of  her  heart,  and  then  Billy's  sister. 
She  took  them  into  her  bungalow  dressing-room  and 
shared  her  lunches  with  them.  She  invited  them  to 
visit  her  in  her  Beverly  Hills  house,  pleading  that  she 

[330] 


VANCE  COPE 


was  lonely  while  her  mother  was  away.  She  won  Billy 
very  easily  with  a  Shetland  pony.  She  won  Mary 
with  a  detailed  plan  for  putting  Billy  in  her  next 
picture.  They  became  an  indissoluble  trio,  and  Cope 
had  to  talk  to  Mary  under  Janet's  eye  or  not  at  all. 

It  was  the  custom  in  Cope's  studio  to  dye  in  a 
tint  of  blue  all  the  white  materials  in  a  scene,  so  as 
to  tone  down  the  harsh  glare  of  white  in  the  photo 
graph.  Janet  asked  that  the  materials  in  her  scenes 
should  be  dyed  pink,  and  this — though  it  would  have 
been  taken  as  a  typical  Nast  interference  in  the 
past — was  accepted  by  the  staff  without  unfriendly 
comment.  Pink  would  serve  the  purpose  as  well  as 
blue;  she  liked  pink;  blue  depressed  her.  That 
was  enough.  They  were  glad  to  keep  her  amiable 
and  happy,  if  pink  would  do  it. 

So  it  happened  that  when  they  came  to  do  the 
sequence  in  which  Sappho  relinquished  Jean  and 
sent  him  to  his  fiancee,  the  set  was  a  pink  boudoir, 
and  Janet  arrived  to  play  the  scenes  in  a  pink 
negligee.  And  it  was  not  only  Cope  who  blinked 
and  stared.  "Gosh!  boy,"  one  of  the  camera  men 
muttered,  "lead  me  to  that  baby  doll." 

She  looked  as  sweet  and  fragile  and  innocent  as  a 
candy  stick.  Billy  came  with  her,  solemnly  holding 
her  hand,  and  she  was  twittering  down  to  him 
like  a  young  mother.  Mary  Merivale  walked 
behind  them  as  proud  as  a  nurse  maid.  I  thought  to 
myself:  "This  will  be  a  Sunday-school  chromo  of 
Sappho,  and  no  mistake! 

22  [  331  ] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

Not  so.  When  they  began  rehearsing  the  scene, 
she  took  on  a  maternal,  sacrificial  mood  that  lifted 
her  out  of  mere  prettiness.  Her  face  was  frankly 
distorted  with  suffering.  Instead  of  caressing  her 
lover  she  fumbled  at  him  painfully  with  numb  hands. 
Her  stony  suppression  of  tears  choked  the  heart  in 
you.  Tears  would  have  been  a  relief.  You  felt  like 
pleading,  "For  Heaven's  sake,  let  her  cry!"  But 
no.  Even  when  her  lover  had  gone  and  she  stood 
looking  out  the  window  after  him,  her  teeth  chat 
tered,  but  she  did  not  break.  And  the  way  she  tried 
to  put  up  her  shaking  hand  to  cover  the  quivering 
of  that  wound  of  a  mouth ! 

Cope,  beside  himself  with  tearful  delight,  kept 
pleading:  "Don't  lose  it!  It's  wonderful!  Do  it 
just  like  that !  Camera ! " 

At  first,  he  must  have  thought  it  was  just  a 
miraculous  accident — as  we  all  did.  He  must  have 
been  afraid  that  she  could  not  repeat  it — as  we  all 
were.  But  she  took  a  long,  hypnotized  look  at  him 
each  time,  as  if  she  were  drawing  her  inspiration 
from  his  emotional  response,  and  did  it  over  and 
over,  bit  by  bit,  again  and  again,  whether  they 
wanted  it  for  medium  shots  or  close-ups.  She  got 
all  of  us  excited  and  keyed  up.  The  whole  staff 
watched  and  worked  in  an  intense,  respectful 
silence.  Cope,  haggard  and  worn  from  his  week  of 
intensity,  his  nerves  on  edge,  his  voice  husky,  sat 
down  after  her  last  sequence  was  taken,  put  his  face 
in  his  hands,  and  wept  with  relief. 

[332] 


VANCE  COPE 


She  ran  to  him,  alarmed,  and  knelt  beside  his  chair. 
"Don't  do  that,"  she  said.  "You've  been  working 
too  hard.  You  mustn't!  Please!  Please  don't !" 

He  took  her  hand  and  crushed  it.  "You — you're 
wonderful,"  he  sobbed. 

She  signaled  to  the  others  to  go  away,  shaking 
her  head  at  them.  As  we  withdrew,  touched  and 
tearful,  she  was  helping  him  to  his  feet  and  taking 
him  to  her  dressing  room. 

13 

It  seemed  to  me  that  something  more  serious 
than  a  nervous  breakdown  had  happened  to  Cope; 
and  I  went  to  the  studio,  next  morning,  prepared  to 
hear  important  news.  There  was  nothing  in  the 
scenario  department  but  talk  about  Janet's  sudden 
blooming  as  a  tragedienne.  They  were  all  enthusias 
tic.  They  had  all  been  won  by  her.  They  loaded 
upon  her  absent  mother  the  enmity  which  Janet 
had  put  off,  and  they  blamed  Mamma  Nast  for 
everything  that  had  been  unpleasant  in  Janet's 
past,  including  her  arrested  development  as  an 
actress.  They  agreed  that  if  Cope  had  had  a  free 
hand  with  her  earlier  she  would  long  ago  have  been 
the  Duse  and  the  Bernhardt  of  the  screen. 

In  the  midst  of  the  discussion  we  were  summoned 
to  an  editorial  conference  with  Cope.  We  went 
eagerly  and  we  were  cordially  received.  He  was  in 
high  spirits.  In  the  confusion  of  our  general  arrival 

[333] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

he  did  not  reply  specifically  to  my  greeting;  and, 
remembering  his  passage  with  Cuthbert  Anderson, 
I  repeated  my  good  morning,  for  fear  he  might  not 
go  on  with  the  business  in  hand  unless  I  spoke  to 
him  first.  He  ignored  me  pointedly.  I  wondered  if 
it  could  be  possible  that  he  and  Janet 

He  wished,  he  said,  to  propose  a  new  ending  for 
"Sappho." 

It  had  been  planned  that,  after  the  scenes  in 
which  Jean  was  pictured  as  happy  with  his  bride,  the 
film  should  end  by  showing  Sappho  serving  as  an 
army  nurse  on  the  battlefield,  with  a  subtitle  specify 
ing  that  she  had  been  ennobled,  not  to  say  can 
onized,  by  the  "supreme  sacrifice."  That  had 
been  thoroughly  satisfactory  to  the  scenarists. 
They  had  a  cheerful  suspicion  that  it  was  being 
planned  during  Mamma  Nast's  absence,  against 
her  will;  and  they  looked  forward  gleefully  to  a 
battle  between  Cope  and  her  when  she  returned. 
But  now  Cope  proposed  a  new  twist.  He  still 
wanted  Sappho  to  give  Jean  up.  Yes.  And  Jean 
was  to  go  to  his  fiancee.  Yes.  But  after  a  se 
quence  that  should  show  Jean  miserable  in  the 
midst  of  the  family's  preparations  for  his  wedding, 
the  story  ought  to  jump  back  to  Sappho  deserted 
at  her  window,  and  up  the  garden  path  to  her,  who 
is  it  she  sees  coming  but  Jean!  He  has  returned 
to  her.  He  can't  be  happy  without  her.  Forgive 
ness — reconciliation — a  hurried  wedding — and  off 
they  go  together  to  America  and  a  new  life. 

[334] 


VANCE  COPE 


I  did  not  offer  any  comment.  I  knew  that  it 
would  be  ignored  and  I  knew  why  it  would  be 
ignored.  I  withdrew  from  the  conference  as  tact 
fully  as  the  situation  permitted,  and  hunted  up 
Janet  in  her  dressing  room. 

"Congratulations,"  I  said.  "You'll  not  need 
to  use  the  blond  wig." 

She  looked  startled. 

"Don't  you  know  you've  won  him?" 

She  stopped  me  with  a  "  Ssh ! "  Her  maid  was  in  the 
room.  She  whispered,  smiling:  "It's  a  secret,  yet." 

"Fine!"  We  shook  hands,  victorious.  "I'm 
sure  you'll  be  happy.  And  now  good-by!" 

"Good-by?  Aren't  you  going  to  stay  and  do  a 
scenario  for  me?" 

"No,"  I  said,  "I  think  not.  I've  been  studying 
the  way  scenarios  are  written,  and  I  don't  think  I'd 
be  a  success  at  it.  It's  a  very  difficult  art.  Very 
difficult.  The  personal  equation  enters  into  it  too 
much  for  me." 

"I'll  help  you  with — with  Samson — if  that's 
what  you  mean." 

"No.  No,  don't.  And  keep  him  out  of  the  hands 
of  the  other  Philistines.  I'm  going  to  say  good-by 
to  him.  Give  him  a  kiss  for  me.  He  deserves  it." 


He  was  polite  and  sympathetic,  but  he  did  not 
try  to  persuade  me  to  stay.  We  parted  coldly.  I 
went  back  to  my  hotel  to  pack,  and  Gadkin  heard 
the  news  of  my  recession  with  a  gratified  pessimism. 

[335] 


SOME  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS 

"I  told  you,"  he  said.  "He's  done.  No  body 
can  work  with  that  four-flush.  He's  got  nothing 
but  conceit.  Nothing!" 

I  wanted  to  tell  Gadkin  that,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
Cope  was  just  beginning,  but  I  felt  that  the  state 
ment  would  be  too  difficult  to  support — unless  I 
predicted  his  marriage  and  the  change  that  has 
since  come  over  the  spirit  of  his  films.  If  that 
change  was  not  apparent  enough  in  the  ending  of 
the  "Sappho"  picture,  it  must  have  been  convinc 
ingly  plain  even  to  Gadkin  in  its  successor. 

"Never!"  said  the  Publicity  blurb.  "Never! 
Never  in  the  history  of  American  art  has  such  a 
symphony  of  mother  love  and  wifely  devotion  been 
played  upon  the  heart-strings  of  the  world  of 
theatergoers.  See  Janet  Nast  and  weep  with  glad 
ness.  See  Mary  Merivale  and  smile  through  your 
tears." 

I  should  like  to  know  how  their  marriage  is  suc 
ceeding  and  how  they  get  on  with  Mamma  Nast; 
but  the  climate  of  southern  California  is  so  balmy 
that  no  one  will  write  you  a  letter;  the  Copes  have 
not  been  involved  in  the  scandal  of  any  Hollywood 
murders,  so  there  is  nothing  about  them  in  the 
newspapers;  and  you  can't  believe  what  you  see 
in  the  motion-picture  magazines.  Read  what  they 
tell  you  about  how  scenarios  are  written ! 

THE  END 


m. 


Y.C  97178 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


KING  BROS. 

B00«  B9U6HT  AMD  SOLD 

1174  Market  St. 

Sim  1-Vii  ii<-i  v<'n 


